Business & Technology Snapshot by TUATARA – July 2024
Welcome to the "Post-Digital Pandemic" world! Of course, we’ll be jokingly discussing the infamous CrowdStrike meltdown caused by a buggy update. We’ll talk about that more and its aftermath, but we’ll also find some space for other Business and technology news, as usual.
Speaking of usual things, we’ve got another CEO Perspective video for you—this time, Krzysztof Goworek discusses Bridging the AI Value Gap: Strategic Deployment for Real Business Impact and Ensuring AI Security in the Public Cloud.
??What happened? An update to CrowdStrike’s cybersecurity system has caused BSOD loops all over the world:
"A faulty software update issued by security giant CrowdStrike has resulted in a massive overnight outage that’s affected Windows computers around the world, disrupting businesses, airports, train stations, banks, broadcasters and the healthcare sector.
CrowdStrike said the outage was not caused by a cyberattack, but was the result of a “defect” in a software update for its flagship security product, Falcon Sensor. The defect caused any Windows computers that Falcon is installed on to crash without fully loading.
“The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed,” said CrowdStrike in a statement on Friday. Some businesses and organizations are beginning to recover, but many expect the outages to drag on into the weekend or next week given the complexity of the fix. CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz told NBC News that it may take “some time for some systems that just automatically won’t recover.” In a later tweet, Kurtz apologized for the disruption." (Tech Crunch, Zack Whittaker, Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai)
?? The aftermath? Well, to kick things off, as you might have guessed, a lawsuit. The CEO of Delta Airlines seems to be very upset about the whole thing:
"Bastian, speaking from Paris, where he travelled last week, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Wednesday that the carrier would seek damages from the disruptions, adding, “We have no choice.”
“If you’re going to be having access, priority access to the Delta ecosystem in terms of technology, you’ve got to test the stuff. You can’t come into a mission critical 24/7 operation and tell us we have a bug,” Bastian said.
CrowdStrike has so far made no offers to help Delta financially, Bastian added, beside offering free consulting advice on dealing with the fallout from the outage. A CrowdStrike spokesperson said in an emailed statement that it has “no knowledge of a lawsuit and have no further comment.” Microsoft didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Delta hired prominent attorney David Boies to seek damages from both CrowdStrike and Microsoft, CNBC reported earlier this week. Boies is known for representing the U.S. government in its landmark antitrust case against Microsoft." (CNBC, Leslie Josephs, Ece Yildirim)
?? What can we learn? The whole incident has CIOs all over the world rethinking their cloud strategies:
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"Shashank Jain, CIO at the financial services firm, Shree Financials, suggested a strategic shift. “Organizations and CISOs must review their cloud strategies, and the automatic updating of patches should be discouraged. All patches should first be tested on a test server,” Jain said further emphasizing that despite CrowdStrike’s reputation, the incident revealed a failure of trust due to untested patches causing a cascading effect.
Saurabh Gugnani, Director and Head of CyberDefence, IAM, and Application Security at Netherlands-headquartered TMF Group, added that a diversified approach to cloud strategies could mitigate such risks. “Yes, they [enterprises] should revisit cloud strategies. It has to be a mix of all the available solutions.” (CIO, Gyana Swain)
?? Well, the CrowdStrike PR team think that free pizza can fix every broken relationship:
CrowdStrike sent $10 Uber Eats gift cards to thank its beleaguered contractors who are helping to manage the fallout of a disastrous software update that caused a global tech meltdown last week.
Millions of computers with the Microsoft Windows operating system were hit with the “blue screen of death” on Friday because of a CrowdStrike glitch that left them unable to boot up.
CrowdStrike has been scrambling to salvage the crisis, which is expected to cost Fortune 500 companies billions of dollars. (NYPost, Thomas Barrabi)
?? The ripple effect of EU’s AI Act and other regulations - tech giants are withholding their AI products in the EU:
"Aiming to fight what they see as vague and overly burdensome regulation by the European Union, U.S. tech giants are playing one of the strongest cards they have: withholding their products.
Why it matters: Until now, the U.S. tech giants have dominated the global digital economy by serving (almost) everyone, accepting divergent regional laws as the cost of doing business." (Axios, Ina Fried)
OpenAI could be on the brink of bankruptcy in under 12 months, with projections of $5 billion in losses ( Windows Central )
?? OpenAI might need another round of funding – the operating costs are quite staggering:
"For context, OpenAI spends up to $700,000 daily to keep ChatGPT running. The amount is likely to fluctuate as the model becomes more sophisticated and advanced. The report sheds more light on OpenAI's financial status, citing that the firm is well on its way to spending a whopping $7 billion on training its AI models and an additional $1.5 billion on staffing. These expenses alone stack miles ahead of its rivals' expenditure predictions for 2024." (windowscentral.com , Kevin Okemwa)
From its early theoretical foundations to?the sophisticated generative models of today, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has continuously evolved, overcoming numerous challenges along the way. The development of generative AI that can create new and realistic content marks a?significant milestone in this evolution. Looking ahead, generative AI is expected to?grow as organisations explore new and innovative ways to?integrate it into daily life and work. Let’s dive into the differences and similarities between traditional AI and generative AI and see how they can reshape the IT industry.
TUATARA Thanks for sharing!??