CIO OPINION
Delegated IT experts can help PC end users by following the published workaround .
Nathan Hill , Distinguished VP Analyst and Chief of
Research , Gartner
Minimising disruption to IT operations post CrowdStrike Windows outage
The recent CrowdStrike Windows outage has IT leaders scrambling to ensure their PCs , staff and businesses are fully operational . This advisory from Gartner analysts , Soyeb Barot , Mary Ruddy , Nathan Hill , will help address key areas for regional enterprises to ensure current and future operational continuity .
On 19 July 2024 , CrowdStrike clients globally began experiencing system outages . Windows servers and virtual machines and endpoint systems failed with a blue screen of death or inoperable systems .
IT decision makers need to organise their actions into short term , medium term and long-term programmes to help with planning , workload and stress management .
Short term : Immediate actions to be taken over next seven days
Alert and engage incident response and crisis management teams
• Use appropriate crisis communications to notify employees , clients and critical third parties of potential disruptions to services or operations .
• Verify that any information , internal and external is coming from authoritative sources to avoid the risk of secondary cyberattacks .
• Mobilise predefined crisis management teams for immediate action to prevent user mistakes , including self-service remediation actions from untrusted sources .
• This includes a single source of information validated by the IT and security teams , and shared through official and crisis communications channels .
The focus for midterm actions is to assess the impact on secondary systems .
44 INTELLIGENTCIO MIDDLE EAST www . intelligentcio . com