🛡️ Crowdstrike becomes the cyber security threat

Happy Wednesday! Last week was action-packed, and the news keeps heating up.

July 24, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes

Welcome, tech friends

Happy Wednesday! Last week was action-packed, and the news keeps heating up.

This week, news from Starbucks and Salesforce in our Quick Hits. For Trending Tools, we’re showcasing hot tool finds like Gamma and Giveaway. This week’s Top Story drops a rundown of the Crowdstrike global outage. And in Social Pulse, we’re sharing some fascinating use cases for Claude 3.5 Sonnet and an awesome periodic table for branding.

Let's dive in! 👇

This week:

  • 🔥 Trending Tools: Gamma, Curated Letters, InstaPlug, and more

  • 🏆 Top Story: Crowdstrike causes global outage in YOLO deploy

  • 🌐 Social Pulse: 10 awesome Claude 3.5 Sonnet uses cases

⚡ QUICK HITS

AI love: Dating app features no humans.

Caffeine + charge: Starbucks adds Benz fill-ups.

Changing film: Generative cinema arrives.

Claude for all: Chatbot goes Android.

Connecting India: LinkedIn introduces video shorts.

Culture boom: K-content spending soars.

Crypto surge: Currencies ride Bitcoin rally.

Fighting frenzy: Evo expects record crowd.

G → Wiz: Google nears $23B Wiz acquisition.

iFund 2.0: Anthropic launches Anthology Fund.

Indian summer: Apple revenue soars 33%.

Leaving Cali.: SpaceX, X move to Texas.

Less force: Salesforce slashes 300 jobs.

Open to investigation: OpenAI’s NDAs scrutinized.

Phone breach: AT&T customer data hacked.

Space rhapsody: NASA beams Missy Elliott to Venus.

Urban air: Air taxis planned for California.

🏆 TOP STORY

🛡️ Crowdstrike becomes the security threat

Crowdstrike

TLDR

CrowdStrike, a major cybersecurity firm, caused a significant global outage due to a flawed software update deployed without validation testing.

Key Points

  1. Outage Impact: The CrowdStrike update affected airlines, hospitals, emergency services, retailers, and other critical systems worldwide, causing widespread disruption.

  2. Scale of the Problem: Microsoft estimated that 8.5 million Windows devices (less than 1% of all Windows machines) were affected, but the impact was amplified due to CrowdStrike's use by enterprises running critical services.

  3. Windows Dependency: The incident highlighted the prevalence of Windows-based systems in the corporate world, as only Windows machines were affected.

  4. Deployment Practices: Questions have been raised about CrowdStrike's testing and deployment processes, given the scale of the disruption caused by a single update.

  5. Shared Responsibility: While CrowdStrike's update caused the issue, Microsoft's system architecture that allows such deep access to cybersecurity tools has also come under scrutiny.

  6. Market Implications: CrowdStrike's stock price fell 11% following the incident, indicating potential market repercussions.

Why It Matters 

This event underscores the critical dependency businesses have on cybersecurity services and highlights potential vulnerabilities in the global technology infrastructure. It raises important questions about:

  • The risks of relying heavily on single service providers

  • The need for more robust testing and deployment practices in the tech industry

  • The importance of redundancy and diversification in critical systems

  • The potential need for greater oversight or regulation in the cybersecurity sector

The incident serves as a wake-up call for both tech companies and their customers to reassess their practices and dependencies to prevent similar large-scale disruptions in the future.

More on the fallout

🍿 DAMIAN BUILDS IN PUBLIC

My journey, failures, and wins

I’ve been supporting client projects this past week and stacking little wins. I’m continuing to learn a fractional sales process that works for me. The biggest learning so far is how to draw out qualified leads ‘why?’ so I can more effectively connect and communicate my value. Seems obvious, but I think listening and demonstrating intention in context is a dynamic skill that takes some practice. Developing confidence in how you say something is as important as what you say.

Biggest win

After reporting a jump in Productpickle’s SEO last week, the next day it went up again. Here is the latest from 0 to 52 DR in less than 2 weeks.

🌐 SOCIAL PULSE

Highlights from social media and key topics of the week

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From the author

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