Because everything is interconnected through a network of computers and a common operating system using one of the three major cloud services providers — Azure, Amazon’s AWS and Google Cloud — a small problem can quickly lead to a doom loop of outages.
In the wee hours of Friday, July 19, cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike pushed a security patch update to its software that caused some devices running Microsoft’s Windows operating system to crash. Because Windows and Microsoft’s Azure cloud are widely used around the world, as is CrowdStrike’s cybersecurity software, the glitch led to a massive global disruption. Airlines grounded planes because the computers that help them navigate the complexity of scheduling, display flight schedules, and monitor flight paths were not working. Hospitals cancelled emergency surgeries because equipment software failed to work. As airport workers, hospital staff and bankers arrived at their desks that morning and fired up their computer terminals, they were greeted with the dreaded “blue screen of death”. At times, the worst IT outage in history last week resembled a scene from a science-fiction movie.
The data outage exposed just how global technology systems are built these days. A small faulty code in a single software update in California can bring down operations in an array of industries around the world. The security patch update caused CrowdStrike’s software to crash the brains of the Windows operating system, known as the kernel. Restarting the computer simply caused it to crash again. That meant the offending file had to be surgically removed from each affected computer.
