The CrowdStrike incident in July caused a lot of big problems for businesses big and small. Airlines were unable to perform check-ins, vendors that we rely on for daily work came to a halt, and rumors about a hacking incident started spreading. As news of the incident quickly spread on that Friday morning, I.T. teams around the world became overwhelmed. To fix the problem, every single computer that was affected by the faulty update had to be touched.
This wasn’t a security incident. Windows computers were crippled by a faulty update. It was out of the hands of the victims. But they had to deal with the fallout. This was an important lesson in incident response and business continuity. It’s easy to say “well, it was our vendor’s fault. Nothing we can do about it!” But the reality is, proactive businesses that want to build resilience will learn some very important lessons from this event. In this article, you’ll learn 3 valuable lessons to protect your business.
#3 Vendors Make Mistakes
Can you believe it? Vendors make mistakes, too! This might seem like an obvious statement, but it carries with it an important lesson. Vendors will make mistakes that can critically affect your business. This brings with it two important decisions for your business.
First, choose your vendors wisely. Don’t assume vendors have the proper precautions in place to protect you. Instead, take time to ask questions of your vendors. And don’t be afraid to ask for proof! “Trust me bro” is not sufficient when the operability of your business is on the line.
Second, plan for the worst. Even if you choose your vendors extremely carefully, mistakes will happen. Unforeseen events will cause a critical outage at some point. This could be a data breach, a natural disaster, or a faulty update, like in the case of CrowdStrike. This leads us right into lesson #2.
#2 Create and Test an Incident Response Plan
Now is the time to create an incident response plan for your business. Don’t wait for another CrowdStrike incident to strike before you take this seriously. Your incident response plan needs to include a few key components.
- The person(s) responsible for executing the plan
- Key contacts, such as your attorney, I.T. department, and cyber insurance provider
- Start with determining if an incident actually happened
- Determine how wide-spread it is
- Don’t forget to debrief and update your plan at the end!
#1 Critical disasters like the CrowdStrike incident don’t have to be fatal
If there’s one positive thing we learn from the CrowdStrike incident, it’s that we can survive despite critical outages like this one. Small businesses and large enterprises are both resilient. With some planning and determination, you can get through an outage even easier!
If you need ideas on where to start, check out our guide on 5 cybersecurity precautions. Need help on your journey to cyber resilience? Sentry CTO can help. Schedule a compatibility consult with our team to find out if we’re the right cybersecurity provider for you.