CrowdStrike Outage

Many were concerned about the computer outage that affected everything from travel to doctor’s offices to bank and investment accounts. It seemed like the world, specially the travel airlines, were at a standstill.

It was a bit of a relief when cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike’s CEO George Kurtz reassured us early in the day by saying, “this is not a security incident or cyber-attack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”¹

In the midst of all that chaos, they also redirected their sales departments to crisis control and proactively called customers to check in with any questions they might have. In the world where a lot of companies may hide from customers, it seemed like they remediated quickly and took accountability.

Still, it’s upsetting to log into accounts and see a warning message. Here’s what Charles Schwab had on its customer portal for most of the day.

“Due to a third-party, global and industry-wide issue, certain functionality may be intermittently slow or unavailable. We’re monitoring the issue. Phone services may be disrupted and hold times may be longer than usual.”

I heard a question several times on Friday: “Is there anything I can do?” Unfortunately, there’s not too much in this type of situation. But it’s a reminder to stay proactive with personal security, like updating passwords.

Sources:

1. CNBC.com, July 19, 2024. “Microsoft-CrowdStike issue causes ‘largest IT outage in history.’”