CrowdStrike Outage: Impact And Recovery
From grounded flights to stalled out supply chains, the recent CrowdStrike Windows outage caused major disruptions across the globe. Read on to find out how Gartner Peer Community members were impacted, and how they're responding.
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A majority of respondents to one Gartner Peer Community poll said the outage had some impact on their organizations
In another Gartner Peer Community poll, half of respondents said their organizations allowed self-service recovery for specific users, while 22% required IT support
Community members shared in a Gartner Peer Community discussion post that in order to manage and mitigate the outage they are primarily focused on employee support, recovery procedures, and incident response
Impacts of the outage were far-reaching, though some remained unaffected
In a Gartner Peer Community poll, 47% of respondents said the CrowdStrike outage had either a severe impact (14%) or a significant impact (33%) on their operations. Still, 20% said there was no impact.
CrowdStrike outage: How much has the outage affected your operations?
n = 83
Note: May not add up to 100% due to rounding
Question: CrowdStrike outage: How much has the outage affected your operations?
Link: https://www.gartner.com/peer-community/poll/crowdstrike-outage-how-much-outage-affected-operations
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Question: CrowdStrike outage: Any quick advice for orgs affected? What immediate actions are your IT and other teams taking to mitigate the effects of the outage?
No impact directly, however the double-whammy of a Microsoft 365 outage at the same time has exacerbated the recovery process of cloud-based servers and desktops for supply-chain services providers who have experienced outages of their Microsoft-cloud based apps.
Targeted self-service recovery often chosen over comprehensive IT intervention
Half of respondents (50%) to a Gartner Peer Community poll said their organization allowed self-service recovery operations for specific functions/users. However, 22% said all associates were required to go through IT.
CrowdStrike outage: Is your organization allowing self-service recovery operations by associates, or are you requiring them to get IT support?
Question: CrowdStrike outage: Is your organization allowing self-service recovery operations by associates, or are you requiring them to get IT support?
Link: https://www.gartner.com/peer-community/poll/crowdstrike-outage-organization-allowing-self-service-recovery-operations-associates-requiring-to-get-it-support
Question: CrowdStrike outage: Any quick advice for orgs affected? What immediate actions are your IT and other teams taking to mitigate the effects of the outage?
We dodged a bullet last week, but if we had been impacted all user support would have been routed through IT. Regardless of the function/role of the user.
Support, response and recovery lead impact management efforts
Employee support (59%), recovery procedures (48%) and incident response (44%) were the most common actions respondent organizations were taking to mitigate risks and manage the impact of the CrowdStrike outage.
What actions is your organization taking to mitigate the risks and manage the impact of the CrowdStrike outage? (Select all that apply)
Question: CrowdStrike outage: Any quick advice for orgs affected? What immediate actions are your IT and other teams taking to mitigate the effects of the outage?
Timely company-wide communication was/is critical. Ability to be flexible with working systems (email, text, etc.) while issues get resolved. And be patient and calm with your IT colleagues. Once they have a handle on resolution, it will work - just be patient and calm.
In their own words...
Question: CrowdStrike outage: Any quick advice for orgs affected? What immediate actions are your IT and other teams taking to mitigate the effects of the outage?
Understand that reliance on vendors means needing to be prepared to address unexpected events and take that into account when negotiating agreements.
...We have invoked a passphrase protocol to protect our users from social engineering attempts to gain unauthorised access to our users computers or systems by claiming to be from IT support in relation to the global IT outage.
Patch roll out should be in Dev / Test followed by Production. This incident shows many companies don't follow that in this era of Cloud native. We are depending on vendor / partner guidelines for change management. This needs to be reviewed. Crowdstrike (sic) should explain what testing they do before they roll out patches to gain customer confidence back. And this again proves how important [it] is to have [a] strong DR plan.
... By building applications and environments that are not tied to a single vendor, we can implement more effective fallback strategies. This approach is akin to diversifying investments across various stocks and indexes rather than concentrating all resources in one area. Diversification in IT infrastructure, just like in finance, reduces risk and enhances resilience, ensuring continuous operations despite unforeseen challenges.