Global Computer Outage Is A Wakeup Call: What to Expect

Some events teach us more than others. When cybersecurity vendor CrowdStrike pushed out an update to its Falcon scanning service early yesterday morning, it caused millions of computers around the world to crash in what has been deemed the “largest IT outage in history.” The outage will likely be viewed as a trigger for more cybersecurity regulation, a turning point for cybersecurity governance, and an impetus for changes to cyber insurance policies. Most importantly, these changes will not be the result of cybercriminal activity; instead, they will have been spurred on by one of the good guys.

Who is CrowdStrike and What Happened?

According to Reuters, CrowdStrike has about 29,000 customers in 170 countries. As one of leading cybersecurity vendors, its Falcon offering is a threat detection and response service that blocks detected malware or cyber-attacks. To do this, it connects to the most privileged areas of a client’s system. Almost immediately after CrowdStrike pushed out a Falcon content update, clients running Microsoft…