Staying Resilient in a Technology-Dependent World: Lessons from the CrowdStrike Outage

In today's interdependent world, the reliance on shared technology has never been more evident—or more perilous.?

On Friday, July 19, what began as a seemingly routine CrowdStrike update quickly spiraled into global disruption, affecting millions of devices and halting operations across industries. Airlines, hospitals, and businesses of all sizes found themselves grappling with the aftermath of a faulty update that knocked out critical systems.

But while some organizations suffered from several days of downtime, others were able to get back up and running within hours.

The difference?

A strong foundation and support services, proactive planning, robust infrastructure, and a commitment to resilience.

The Key to Quick Recovery: A Strong Foundation

At the heart of this recovery was the principle of maintaining a robust and resilient foundation. For those who were prepared, the outage was a manageable inconvenience rather than a severe crisis. Businesses with strong foundations in place, supported by robust processes, regular testing, and a resilient cloud strategy were able to recover quickly. For Atlasticity's clients, this meant business as usual before lunchtime, despite the global chaos. They had invested in elasticity within their cloud infrastructure, ensuring that they could easily scale resources, deploy automated recovery solutions, and rely on decentralized backups.

How can businesses build a strong foundation for resilience?

• Leverage Elasticity in the AWS Cloud: AWS cloud solutions provide the flexibility and scalability needed to recover swiftly from disruptions.
• Implement and Test Backups Regularly: Ensure you have reliable immutable backups in diverse cloud storage and test them frequently to verify they will function when needed.
• Develop a Disaster Recovery Plan:?A well-structured disaster recovery plan can be the difference between a quick recovery and prolonged downtime. Test your plan regularly to identify any gaps—quarterly to bi-annually at a minimum
• Establish an Incident Response Team: Equip your organization with a dedicated team ready to respond to emergencies. Regular drills and simulations can enhance incident response strategy effectiveness.
• Proactive Infrastructure Planning: Investing in a Cloud Operations Center of Excellence ensures that your infrastructure is continually optimized for resilience and prepared for rapid recovery if needed.

The Pitfalls of Over-Reliance on a Single Provider

The outage highlighted the dangers of relying too heavily on a single provider for critical infrastructure. For example, relying exclusively on Microsoft Active Directory servers or backing up essential data on that same platform that went down as one point of failure, proved catastrophic for many.?

To build a more resilient digital ecosystem, it’s essential to adopt a diversified approach. By diversifying infrastructure across multiple providers, businesses can reduce risk with multilayered data security and enhanced operational resilience.

Rethinking Your Infrastructure Strategy

With the CrowdStrike outage now resolved, it's crucial to review and assess your current infrastructure strategy.

Relying entirely on the Microsoft ecosystem for both applications and infrastructure might sound convenient for the IT staff, but this dependency exposes your business to unnecessary risk. While Microsoft 365 may be the leading choice for email applications, that doesn’t mean Microsoft Azure is the only option for your infrastructure needs. By diversifying your cloud provider for infrastructure and platforms, you reduce the risk of a single point of failure and enhance your ability to recover quickly from unforeseen disruptions.?

Choosing AWS as part of your cloud strategy allows you to leverage the strengths of the world’s leading public cloud provider. AWS offers a robust, scalable environment that can work in tandem with your existing systems, providing an additional layer of security and resilience.?

Partnering with an experienced AWS consulting firm can further reduce risk, ensure efficient adoption and operations, and provide the guidance needed to build a truly resilient infrastructure.

Diversify to Fortify and Enhance Resiliency

The CrowdStrike outage was a wake-up call for many organizations worldwide. It’s a reminder that proactive planning, a strong foundation, and diversified infrastructure are essential to maintaining business continuity in a fast-paced digital landscape.?

At Atlasticity, we believe that a strong, solid foundation is key to surviving and thriving in today’s technology-driven world. By diversifying your infrastructure and having a trusted partner by your side, you can ensure that your business remains resilient, no matter what challenges arise.