It wasn’t a hack, cyberattack or even a sophisticated scam. The chaos that hit everything from airlines to hospitals to banks on Friday (July 19) was caused by a faulty software update from security company CrowdStrike. However, security is at the top of the table in the Connected Economy this week, and as it tries to ensure that “this won’t happen again,” here are five things you need to watch for, whether you’re a C-level banking executive, security professional or just an interested observer.
Financial institutions were temporarily hit Friday and the outage that stemmed from CrowdStrike and spread to Windows systems went deep and wide. According to DownDetector’s reading on Friday, several banks and other financial institutions were affected, but not as badly as the medical and airlines sectors. The effect on airline scheduling has been well-documented, and Wired magazine reported that several hospitals in the U.K., Australia and Israel were affected. Banks that were temporarily affected included Wells Fargo, Charles Schwab and TD Bank. While most systems are now up and running, the fix for the CrowdStrike outage is manual and will take some time.