The recent collapse of CrowdStrike on July 19, 2024, highlighted the fragility of many organizations in the face of unexpected events, even those that do not involve cyberattacks. This incident affected more than 8.5 million Microsoft Windows devices, causing serious operational disruptions.
The situation underscores the importance of having a robust data protection and disaster recovery plan in place to ensure business continuity. As a leader in data storage and protection solutions, Synology offers key strategies to prevent a similar scenario from paralyzing a company’s operations.
“The CrowdStrike incident reminds us how vulnerable businesses can be without a well-structured data protection plan. At Synology, we are committed to delivering solutions that not only enable efficient backups, but also fast and secure restores, ensuring business continuity even in the most unforeseen scenarios,” said Ivan Gento Pariente, Regional Marketing Manager at Synology.
The global impact of the CrowdStrike failure
A faulty update to CrowdStrike’s “Falcon Sensor” triggered a global domino effect, starting in Australia and quickly spreading. Key sectors such as finance, IT and manufacturing were severely affected. In the United States, the incident disrupted thousands of flights, causing cancellations and delays.
This event shows that systems can fail, even without the presence of malicious actors, and that not being adequately prepared can have devastating consequences. Despite this, in Spain, only 24.3% of companies plan to increase their investment in cybersecurity in the coming months, according to the Business Competitiveness Observatory in Cybersecurity of the Chamber of Commerce.
CrowdStrike global incident underscores the importance of a robust backup and recovery strategy
Furthermore, 50% of Spanish companies lack a cybersecurity strategy. The main barriers to improvement in this field are the lack of financial resources (28.4%) and technical ignorance (26.3%). This lack of preparation can amplify the consequences of incidents such as CrowdStrike, making it take longer for companies to recover from unforeseen technological failures.
Synology: Keys to building a solid data protection plan and ensuring business continuity
In light of the CrowdStrike incident, Synology recommends a number of essential actions to develop an effective data protection plan that enables businesses to be prepared for any eventuality:
- Full and frequent backups: Maintaining a backup strategy that covers all data sources and devices is crucial. Data loss without backup can paralyze operations. Synology offers solutions that enable automatic and scheduled backups for both physical and virtual devices across multiple environments.
- Regular restoration tests: It’s not enough to have backups; it’s essential to periodically test recovery to ensure that systems can be successfully restored in an emergency. Synology tools, such as Active Backup, allow you to run simulations to validate the effectiveness of your recovery plan.
- Instant recovery of virtual machines: Reducing downtime is vital to minimizing impact. Synology enables fast restorations of virtual machines and operating systems, allowing businesses to continue operating while issues are resolved.
- Restoration on multiple platforms: An effective recovery plan must consider restoration across multiple environments. Synology makes it easy to recover data and systems across multiple platforms, providing flexibility in critical times.
- Off-site backup: Having local backups is important, but having backups in remote locations adds an extra layer of security. In CrowdStrike’s case, companies with cloud or off-site backups could have gotten their services back up faster. Synology offers hybrid solutions that combine local and cloud backups, ensuring fast access to crucial data from any location.
