Global Microsoft Outage

As you may be aware, there was a significant cybersecurity event last week that affected critical infrastructure globally, not just within the United States. We are pleased to inform you that none of Sunstate Technology Group’s clients were affected internally by this incident. This is largely due to our use of SentinelOne EDR antivirus as part of our managed services, rather than CrowdStrike. However, some clients experienced disruptions with third-party cloud vendors that were impacted by the event.

What Happened:

CrowdStrike, a well-known cybersecurity platform, experienced a significant issue last week when a botched software update was pushed out to their customers. The update, intended to enhance security against new threats, contained buggy code that corrupted systems, taking them offline. Unfortunately, the auto-update feature meant that this flawed update was rolled out simultaneously to all systems running CrowdStrike, exacerbating the problem.

Resolution:

CrowdStrike has released a repair for the issue and estimates that a complete resolution will be achieved within the next 4 to 5 days. Their initial efforts have been focused on repairing critical infrastructure and making the fix available to all affected industries.

Summary:

This incident underscores the importance of lessons to be learned industry-wide, as such issues can affect any software or hardware. Key takeaways include the importance of redundancy, regular backups, and careful management of upgrades. The costs incurred from such an outage far outweigh the preventive measures that should be in place.

At Sunstate Technology Group, we are committed to your network security. The software products we provide as part of our security bundle are thoroughly vetted and selected based on our 15+ years of experience as a Managed Service Provider (MSP). This commitment also extends to our hardware recommendations, with the goal of ensuring maximum uptime. Our weekly maintenance efforts are designed to keep your equipment operating securely and at peak performance, thereby maximizing your return on investment (ROI).

For a comparison of SentinelOne vs. CrowdStrike, please refer to the following link: SentinelOne vs. CrowdStrike