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Microsoft’s cloud unit said it is lately researching features that its consumers can adopt to mitigate the issues.
Update: Microsoft has attributed the cause of the outage to a CrowdStrike update.
In an update emailed to Gulf Business, Microsoft UAE said: “Earlier today, a CrowdStrike update was guilty of bringing down several IT systems around the world. We actively assist clients to help them recover.
The unit said it is lately exploring features that its consumers can adopt to mitigate the effects of the problem, Reuters reported.
– State of Microsoft 365 (@MSFT365Status) July 18, 2024
The latest update to the Microsoft 365 admin center indicates that users may not be able to access Microsoft 365 apps and services.
He added that “users get some relief as we continue to mitigate the impact. “
Read: CrowdStrike CEO: “This is a security incident or a cyberattack”
According to the most recent user notification, Microsoft said those affected would likely include, but are not limited to, the following:
– PowerBI: Users can realize that their service is in read-only mode while we take care of the impact.
– Microsoft Fabric: Users can tell that their service is in read-only mode while we process the effect.
– Microsoft Teams: Users may not take advantage of Microsoft Teams features, adding support, organizational chats, and user registration.
– Microsoft 365 admin center: Administrators may intermittently be unable to access the Microsoft 365 admin center and any actions may be delayed if it is accessible.
Along with the prestige update, the admin center notification said: “We continue to see increased service availability across several Microsoft 365 apps and services. We are heavily tracking our telemetry insights so this upward trend continues as our mitigation measures continue to progress.
Meanwhile, regional cybersecurity experts will have their say on Friday’s events.
“This Microsoft IT outage demonstrates the need for more physically powerful and resilient responses so that when those issues arise, they can be temporarily resolved causing visitor chaos and security risk,” said Mark Jow, Gigamon’s security evangelist in EMEA.
“Preparedness is key: each and every security and IT vendor will need to have a physically powerful formula in their software progression lifecycle to check for updates before deployment and ensure there are no security flaws in updates,” added Jow.
Reacting to the global disruption, James Maude, CTO of BeyondTrust, said: “It appears that an update to CrowdStrike is causing the Windows operating formula to fail, creating global disruptions of IT formulas that have affected almost every single industry. The affected formulas provide users with the dreaded “Blue Screen of Death” (BSOD) and, in the worst case, users are trapped in a cycle of crashing and restarting.
“The solution appears to require physical intervention to rename or delete the update file, making the recovery procedure lengthy and confusing for remote systems. “
Maude added: “While any software can be volatile or buggy, this is especially a challenge for security vendors like CrowdStrike as they have very deep integration into the operational formula for monitoring and endpoint.
“This means that any error or instability can cause the entire operational formula to collapse, which happens to be what we have unfortunately experienced in the last 24 hours. “
The Microsoft-CrowdStrike outage is expected to be one of the largest computer outages ever recorded in the world and its consequences have yet to manifest. Darren Anstee, NETSCOUT’s Director of Security Technology, said: “There will undoubtedly be massive consequences, with many questions arising about how to balance the need for regular security updates for defence and compliance, with the threat of applying unqualified updates. to systems.
Tesla and banking, payment systems, and systems also fall.
Alexey Lukatsky, Managing Director of Cybersecurity Consulting at Positive Technologies, said: “This incident shows us how firmly embedded data generation is in people’s lives and various business processes, and how catastrophic the consequences of accidental or unauthorized malicious use of the formula are. IT infrastructure can be.
“In other words, companies are faced with the task of evaluating unbearable events with catastrophic consequences that may occur in their operations due to their impact on IT infrastructure. ”
Read: Microsoft global outage: Major banks, airlines and media affected
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