Insights are generally written on a Friday morning for publication during the coming week (let me know if you are curious how we do it) and at the time of writing, this is the lead headline on BBC news.
- Reports of IT outages are being made across the world, including:
- Some US airlines have grounded all their flights
- Multiple UK airports are reporting delays and cancellations
- Sky News is off the air
- UK railway companies are reporting delays as drivers display panels are not being updated
Shortly afterwards, the CEO of Crowdstrike, a global IT security company, is quoted by BBC Tech as saying:
Crowdstrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed. We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website. We further recommend organisations ensure they’re communicating with Crowdstrike representatives through official channels. Our team is fully mobilised to ensure the security and stability of Crowdstrike customers.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cnk4jdwp49et
When the internet was created, it was designed with built-in resilience in case any one device failed, so the re-routing tables could move packets of data another way. Of course, that didn’t take into account the global enterprises such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google, global cybersecurity providers, etc.