On 19 July, a faulty software update originating from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike impacted Windows machines worldwide, triggering a major global IT outage. This unprecedented event caused widespread disruptions across various sectors, impacting businesses, institutions, and critical services.

While the cause was not a cyberattack, this is a stark reminder of the vulnerability of our interconnected digital world, and shows that organisations are not necessarily ready for an outage on core business processes. This highlights the importance of data protection and cyber resiliency to ensure quick recovery and business continuity.

For organisations there is a way to safeguard against the next big IT outage. For example partnering with a hybrid cloud infrastructure company such as Hitachi Vantara can significantly aid in building a comprehensive data resiliency strategy.

In this interview with Matthew Hardman, Chief Technology Officer, Asia-Pacific, Hitachi Vantara, we uncover how businesses today can protect their interests against another occurrence.

In your expert opinion, what were some of the reasons that have caused this IT outage?

A faulty software update from CrowdStrike triggered worldwide IT disruption. Unfortunately, a corrupted file within the update caused widespread system crashes. This manifested into machines around the world experiencing blue screens of death, and reboot loops, ultimately disrupting daily operations across the globe.

Matthew Hardman, Chief Technology Officer, Asia-Pacific, Hitachi Vantara

With untold cost and inconvenience caused, what can some companies do to safeguard or protect themselves from a similar occurrence in the near future?

Many organisations are not fully prepared for the very real risks posed by cyberattacks and outages. The key to prevention and business continuity lies in having a well-defined data resiliency strategy in place.

Data resiliency is an organisation’s ability to recover from data breaches and other losses, enact business continuity plans quickly, and implement stronger data protection measures moving forward. It is critical to prioritise data resiliency by implementing best practices in this area.

Businesses can fortify their defences and warrant service steadiness through several key strategies. Here are some steps to consider:

1. Assess your current resilience. Before taking action, organisations should take stock of their current level of cyber resilience, data protection, and overall operational resilience. This might involve working with internal experts or a trusted partner to assess their on-premises, hybrid cloud, or fully cloud-based environments.
2. Embrace automation for faster response. Frequent and sophisticated cyberattacks necessitate a proactive and swift response. Automation can play a key role, whether it is notifying administrators of suspicious activity or isolating compromised systems.
3. Implement a secure and immutable infrastructure. Having a backup and recovery plan with security measures in place is a good start, but it is not enough for data resiliency. A truly resilient infrastructure requires data immutability, consistent deployment processes, and the ability to withstand unexpected system failures.
4. Partner with a trusted expert. Organisations need a data resiliency plan encompassing their entire environment, both on-premises and in the cloud. Collaboration across the organisation, including addressing shadow IT, is essential. While there’s a lot to consider, a trusted data infrastructure expert like Hitachi Vantara can support you in implementing strategic solutions to improve your current data resiliency posture at any stage. Regularly refreshing and rehearsing IT outage response plans are crucial in the digital age. Partnering with such an expert allows you to identify vulnerabilities and determine the necessary steps to ensure proper data protection, security, compliance, and cyber resilience.

As an IT professional in the field, what would you say were the learnings delivered following the global IT outage?

This incident serves as a valuable reminder on the extremely dire consequences of an outage when core business processes are affected. If your business goes offline because you can’t access your data, what does that do to your bottom line? What will you owe in regulatory fines? How will this impact customer trust?

It’s a massive problem that could result in a huge – potentially fatal – hit to your business. This puts a spotlight on why organisations need to build resilience into their data infrastructure. So much of what we do in society is powered by data and applications.

There’s such an explosion of data generated today, which is no surprise as data fuels emerging technologies such as generative artificial intelligence (AI). Hitachi Vantara’s Modern Data Infrastructure Dynamics report found that 60% of companies in Asia feel overwhelmed by the data deluge, and almost 75% are concerned with infrastructure scalability.

At the same time, the threat landscape continues to grow. Organisations today face unprecedented challenges as they strive to maintain their data’s integrity, availability, and security — all while ensuring compliance with complex local data protection laws.

It’s time for organisations to consider the resiliency of their data infrastructure as data volumes surge and their protection becomes ever more critical.

How can a company like Hitachi Vantara help companies to overcome issues like this in the future, should they occur?

At Hitachi Vantara, we offer a 100% Data Availability Guarantee, trusted by thousands of our customers for over two decades. This has supported diverse and challenging open systems and mainframe databases and applications, ensuring uninterrupted operations and success without downtime.

This guarantee also extends to our latest VSP One solution, which provide block, file, and object storage for traditional and modern workloads at the edge, core, and cloud. Businesses that cannot risk losing access to their data choose our VSP One solutions. This includes 76% of Fortune 100 companies, 10 out of 10 top insurers and telcos, 9 out of 10 top manufacturers and health providers, and 8 out of 10 top banks. Our commitment to building resilient IT ecosystems helps our customers maintain operational excellence and safeguard their critical data.

(Images: Hitachi Vantara; Main Image: Shekai on Unsplash)