The Blue Screen of Death Seen Around the World - What Happened? Part 1 of 2

“Alicia, something weird is happening! I got the blue screen of death on my computer, so I restarted it…and, now Windows is deleting all of the files on my hard drive. I can’t stop it! There’s nothing I can do about it!”

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A colleague frantically shared this with me during a phone call last Thursday, July 18.

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By July 19, the next day, the headlines started pouring in – news of a much larger, global PC problem that brought down the operations of banks, airlines, hospitals, restaurants, retail giants, and more.

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Though the two incidents turned out to be unrelated, their impact was the same – the inability to perform work due to receiving the “blue screen of death (BSoD)”

David Weston, Microsoft’s Vice-President of Enterprise and OS Security reported that approximately 8.5 million PCs received the BSoD. Although this only represents about 1% of total PCs in use worldwide, as Anthony Ha wrote in his Tech Crunch article ,

It’s also worth noting that even if only one computer crashed, it could potentially take down an entire network or datacenter.

What Happened? ?

In the last article , I warned against internal cyber threats and the importance of developing Insider Risk Management programs. But this latest faulty Crowdstrike Falcon software update is once again a reminder of the damage caused by external digital threats as well.

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While Crowdstrike’s investigation and root cause analysis is in progress, it's important to note these facts:

• This software glitch is not a cyber-attack.
• Microsoft is also not the source of this glitch.
• Systems running Linux or macOS were not affected.
• Crowdstrike is offering round-the-clock remediation updates via their blog and support portal.

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As Weston mentioned in a blogpost, Microsoft is working in lockstep with Crowdstrike to investigate, troubleshoot, and “…develop a scalable solution that will help Microsoft’s Azure infrastructure accelerate a fix for CrowdStrike’s faulty update.”

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The video below summarizes what is known so far about this glitch and its root causes:

Switching from Digital to Analog Operations ?

More details are sure to be released over the coming days and weeks about this situation. In the meantime, it begs the question - do we need analog backups to decrease our digital dependence?

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I’ll share more about this in part two of this article. I’ll also cite examples of companies that successfully (and painfully) transitioned to analog operations during the Crowdstrike software glitch. Subscribe to this newsletter to receive a notification when part two arrives. ?

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About the Author

Alicia Butler Pierre is the Founder & CEO of Equilibria, Inc. – an operations management firm specializing in increasing enterprise value for fast-growing small businesses. She’s a software inventor, a two-time Amazon bestselling author, and producer of a top 2% podcast .

Alicia also serves on the boards of three education-focused organizations and is an adjunct instructor of Lean Principles at Purdue University . She serves as the USA Chair of the G100’s Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises. The Process Excellence Network recognized her as a Top 50 Thought Leader in Operational Excellence. A chemical engineer turned entrepreneur, she’s designed and optimized processes for small businesses, large enterprises, non-profits, and government organizations alike.