Traffic on the internet’s superhighway ground to a halt last month when the world experienced a global IT outage, caused by a software update from CrowdStrike. Photo Credit: Adobe Stock/Robert
It has not been a good couple of weeks for CrowdStrike.
The security vendor – one of the world’s largest – found itself the unfortunate source of a massive outage
that crippled over half of the modern world late last month. Flights
were cancelled and planes were grounded, global services were disrupted,
and broadcasters found themselves voiceless and unable to go on-air.
Weeks later, the aftereffects are still being felt: American airline
Delta has since lashed out at CrowdStrike, claiming its apology issued
post-outage was “vastly inadequate” and labelling the tech company as
“grossly negligent”.
CrowdStrike, on its part, has done its best to own up to its
mistakes, and resolved the outage issue in less than 24 hours. Company
president Michael Sentonas has also said his mea culpas, personally accepting a “Most Epic Fail” award at the Pwnie Awards during the recent Las Vegas Def Con hacking conference.
“We got this horribly wrong, we’ve said that a number of different
times,” Sentonas admitted. “It’s super important to own it when you do
things well, it’s super important to own it when you do things horribly
wrong, which we did in this case."
This trophy will sit in a “place of pride” at CrowdStrike
headquarters in Austin, Texas, serving as a reminder to all staff as
well as Sentonas himself.
“Our goal is to protect people, and we got this wrong… I want to make
sure everybody understands these things can’t happen,” he said.