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Crowdstrike is one of the leading firms that plays a major role in cybersecurity and protection from Cyber threats. Crowdstrike has advanced and renowned software called Falcon. The firm uses machine learning to protect government systems. The recent update on Falcon Sensor, troubled the entire Windows system across the globe. It caused a big stop for various businesses that depended on Microsoft for their daily operations. This blog is about Crowd strike and its software.

1.CROWDSTRIKE: THE ULTIMATE SECURITY SOLUTION

Crowdstrike is a global cybersecurity pioneer; therefore, it gets to work with more than thousands of companies around the globe. The industries includes finance, healthcare, government, technology, and Many more by serving small, medium and big shots in the market.

The company has became a major player in the cybersecurity industry by introducing 

Advanced technologies by the help of Machine learning and artificial intelligence in identifying the security threats and resolving them. 

The efforts of the Crowrdstrike doesn’t just end with private sectors. They also work with government agencies which highlights crowd strikes efficiency in ensuring trustworthy and Protection till  that honorable extent.

HISTORY OF CROWDSTRIKE              

In 2011, cybersecurity experts George Kurtz, Dmitri Alperovitch, and Gregg Marston founded Crowdstrike. The key founder Kurtz was Global Chief Technology Officer at McAfee. At McAfee he was responsible for overseeing technology strategy.

This Strong and Efficient team led to breaking barriers and building strong Strategies with the knowledge they had within them. It also later helped them in developing advanced threat detection technology, es.

They launched falcon platform in the year of 2013 which was a significant innovation from them. Later by time they started stepping out Globally by setting up offices across continents. United States, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa and some more. This helped them in gaining clients all across the region.

LEGACY AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF CROWDSTRIKE

With 13 years of experience and efficient commitment they have come a long way with numerous achievements. This experience kept the legacy on fire by keeping the word of Trust and Security. This strong dedication has left an everlasting mark in the cybersecurity industry.

MAJOR ACHIEVEMENTS

•  2016 Democratic National Committee (DNC) Hack 

In 2016, the Democratic National Committee hired CrowdStrike. This was to investigate a breach of its computer network in which attackers had accessed emails and other sensitive information.

• Sony Pictures Entertainment Hack (2014)

CrowdStrike had provided important insights and analysis following the devastating cyberattack on Sony Pictures. Though they weren’t on primary researcher Position in the case, those insights helped Sony.

• Cyber Attacks on Ukrainian Artillery (2016)

In the task, CrowdStrike found complex malware used to target Ukrainian artillery units.

KEY CLIENTS OF CROWRDSTRIKE

• Google- The well-known tech giant uses Crowdstrike to safeguard its extensive digital network.

• Apple- The global technology giant Apple protects its corporate networks and information from sophisticated attacks by leveraging CrowdStrike’s technology.

• Microsoft- Microsoft and CrowdStrike collaborate to integrate security technologies, fusing Microsoft’s Defender and Sentinel with CrowdStrike’s Falcon platform .

• Sony– After the following Incident of cyber attack, Sony has hired Crowrdstrike  for its advanced threat protection solutions.  

• Salesforce- The company uses Crowrdstrike in order to protect and secure thier (CRM) Customer relation systems.

FEATURES AND SECURITY FUNCTION OF FALCON(CROWRDSTRIKE)

Crowdstrike has introduced numerous softwares and features in Order to Tackle with increasing cyber Security threats. With the rise of technology, the opportunities for online exploitation have also increased..

FALCON PROTECTION

• Falcon Prevent is a Crowdstrike next-gen antivirus(NGAV). By combining the power of machine learning, behavioral analysis and artificial intelligence to prevent threats.

You can purchase it directly through their website.

• This protects malware and other software from affecting endpoints. It can prevent the system from both known and unknown threats in real time.

INTELLIGENCE

• Falcon X: CrowdStrike introduced an advanced smart solution that helps identify and analyze threats.. It also forms actionable insight that helps the firm to understand the manner of threat to improve their security structure.

• Falcon OverWatch: The Falcon OverWatch expert team monitors a manual-based threat-hunting software 24/7. This service provides a higher level of security by the efforts of the people in the team.

RESPONSE SYSTEM

•  Falcon Insight: It enables the organization to identify, investigate, and handle advanced threats and incidents.. The service provides real time analysis on end point activities and detailed forensic analysis on it as a response.

•  Falcon Discover: The tool helps in discovering and monitoring applications in the organization. It also supports in identifying applications that are open to threats and easy access for attackers.

FALCON CLOUD SECURITY 

• Falcon Cloud Workload Protection: The tool provides protection for cloud based activities. It protects information and data, specifically for cloud security and detection.

• Falcon Kubernetes Security: The developers created this tool to secure containerized applications running in Kubernetes. It protects it from all threats and vulnerabilities.

FALCON IDENTITY PROTECTION

• The tool majorly focuses on Identity related data which can cause Identity theft. It also helps with other identity-related threats by keeping an eye on controlling access and authentication.

THE CROWDSTRIKE UPDATE THAT FLUSTERED ENTIRE WINDOWS SYSTEMS ACROSS THE GLOBE

 IMAGE SOURCE:https://picjumbo.com/blue-screen-microsoft-bsod-sad-smiley/

On Friday, July 19, 2024, at 09:39 Indian Standard Time (IST),The windows systems worldwide crashed by showing blue screen. This troubled the companies and individuals depending on windows environment. It also stayed for long hours around the globe that affected industries such as healthcare ,Airline, finance and more. The new CrowdStrike update for endpoint protection was the main cause. The endpoint protection is for preventing the device from malware attack, Social Engineering Attacks, Network Attacks, Data breaching and more.

According to the website 6sense.com, CrowdStrike has more than 3,500 customers. It covers major countries like the United states, India, Australia and America. Serving companies from small to Big scale, the company has worked together continuously and put commitment to ensure safety. Crowdstrike achieved this by providing updates time by time according to the dynamic technological environment to fulfill upcoming security needs.

Crowdstrike shared trust and safety standards with clients for a long time, until the recent crash incident. Their expertise made the outage unexpected, and it affected all Windows-dependent systems.

As software with full or near-full access to the operating system, changes can significantly or subtly affect the entire system.

On top of all these, The scammers also found space to jump into the situation and utilize it, later in the hour , the company has announced that there many scammers acting to offer solutions to the problem by claiming that they are from the Crowdstrike support team to swipe money from the individuals.

LET’S LOOK INTO THIS IN DETAIL

The next day, CrowdStrike released an update for its Falcon Sensor on Windows systems to collect data on new and unusual hacker attack methods.

However, the update contained buggy code that didn’t support Windows machines, causing system crashes. This issue was only discovered after it was downloaded onto Crowdstrak clients’ systems .

When it reached the user’s system,it disrupted the windows supporting functions which then led to a pop of blue screen from microsoft conveying the message that “Your PC ran into a problem and needs to restart.” but the problem persisted even after various attempts to restart the device.

The Falcon update targeted Windows hosts with sensor version 7.11 and above. Only Windows systems were affected, not Linux or Mac, as the update was specifically designed for Windows.

HOW IT AFFECTED MICROSOFT SYSTEM

When the device was loaded with new buggy update from Crowrdstrike, it affected Microsoft Windows systems in several specific ways:

• Instability of the system: the update led to frequent crashes and automated reboots.

• System Lockouts: It was seen that few systems  didn’t allow  users to login and access major documents and data.

• Issues with system performance: In relation to the faulty update, users experienced slow performance and applications went unresponsive.

• Compatibility Problems:The Update has made issues with existing apps and the following apps stopped working.

• Error in Telemetry Info collection:As the update was for gathering information on upcoming threats, the error in the update led to inappropriate data gathering and providing inaccurate response.

By the above mentioned Complications, we can understand how these errors and problems would have disrupted the day to day activities of numerous organizations working with Windows systems.

LET’S HAVE A INSIGHT ON  WHAT HAPPENED WITH ORGANIZATIONS  WORKING WITH WINDOWS SYSTEM

ALT TEXT:”A stressed businessman with his head in his hands, while a colleague stands beside him, offering support.“

SOURCE: https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-in-black-suit-jacket-feeling-stressed-4175021/

• Financial services: Major service like banking and financial  transactions was disrupted by this technical outage and led to slow processing of banking activities.

It also became an opportunity for causing vulnerability to cyber attacks during the following  hours.

• HealthCare: The hospital management systems  which were used for recording medical records and other data couldn’t function well ,which has disturbed the smooth processing of the hospital activities.

It also,Caused delays in accessing patient records that forced them to Hold up minor treatments this has created an extreme operational challenge for big hospitals across the city .

• Manufacturing:The automated manufacturing units faced difficulties that made the process go slow.

As a Result, The interrupted  supply chain management and destroyed production planning has led to some revenue loss for the industry.

• Retail and E-Commerce: The outage has majorly affected small to big retailers depending on the windows system, transactions were disrupted, leading to potential revenue losses and Customers experienced poor service with slow and crashing systems. 

•  Government and Public Sector: The numerous Government agencies and public service systems couldn’t operate well during the outage and it has also created risk of cyber threats which aimed at government systems.

•  Education: The administrative systems and online platforms were troubled by the outage , it also made difficulties among students and teachers for accessing important resources and data.

• Airline and transportation:Disruptions to flight scheduling and management systems caused delays and cancellations.

           This has affected check in and ticketing process that made passengers run in big Headaches.

RESOLUTION AND BY CROWDSTRIKE

Crowrdstrike has assured that their engineering team has been working efficiently to resolve the issues as fast as possible. After realizing the issues Crowdstrike team initiated investigating on identifying the root cause of the problem, later to fix the situation Crowrdstrike had to roll back the faulty update in order fix the system and get it back to normal.

PREVENTATIVE STEPS TAKEN BY CROWDSTRIKE 

• Local Developer Testing: Before releasing the update into the client’s system, they will try with local systems in the Aim to identify early stages of errors and bugs.

• Content Update and Rollback Testing: They will simulate the entire process of content updating and roll back to see if it works smoothly at the clients end.

• Stress Testing, Fuzzing, and Fault Injection:These test are done by injecting faults and by  giving stress on the update content to understand the capabilities and vulnerabilities of the update 

• Stability Testing: Stability test is being made to make sure that software can work around all dynamic technical environments

• Content Interface Testing:The test has been put up to determine if the updates incorporate with current interface and do not cause any issues

By bringing together all these improvements  and  preventative actions ,Crowrdstrikes aims at total prevention from catching up with such issues and they are committed to providing the highest standards of cybersecurity.

CONCLUSION

The crowdstrike outage that has influenced whole windows system across the globe, this showcases how a core technical issue can affect whole systems and organizations that are depending on the operating system which took their day to day operations down and caused difficulties to its customers ,this also builded opportunity for scammers to jump into work but with constant commitment of Crowrdstrike, It was able diagnose and roll back the following update with faulty code, even though the outage affected everyone for a while, it has become a lesson to learn from mistakes and bring improvements and revise security protocols and practices in rolling out new updates, ensuring stronger safeguards and more resilient solutions to protect against future disruptions.