As the world continues to recover from the CrowdStrike disruption that affected 8.5 million devices running Microsoft Windows, many small businesses are still struggling.
CrowdStrike's primary clientele encompasses over half of the Fortune 500 companies in the U.S. Additionally, CrowdStrike actively targets small to medium-sized enterprises, according to a blog post on their website.: Why Small Businesses Choose CrowdStrike
“Cybercriminals increasingly target SMBs because they can represent softer targets than large enterprises. SMBs often lack the resources, technical expertise and mature security infrastructure that large organizations use to defend against modern threats. According to one study, just 18% of SMBs with 250 or more employees have a dedicated security budget. This number drops to 8% for businesses with 50 or fewer employees.”
Small businesses often lack the IT resources of larger companies, placing the burden on the owners to resolve such issues. The ripple effects of this significant shutdown are particularly devastating for small enterprises as they grapple with the CrowdStrike update issue, which demands technical expertise and extensive manual labor for each impacted device. Moreover, they face the challenges of lost working hours, revenue, recovery of their compromised tools, and harm to their business reputation.
Depending on how they utilize their Microsoft tools, small businesses reported issues including:
- Credit card processing
- Human resources
- Payroll
- Travel
- Shipping and delivery
- Accounts receivables and payables
- Sending and receiving emails
- Access to critical files
- Managing schedules therefore missing critical deadlines
- Creating invoices
- Utilizing tools such as Docusign for signing contracts
- Virtual appointments were not available
CrowdStrike has posted step-by-step manual fixes on its blog, which may be confusing for non-technical small business owners.
Microsoft also released a fix that speeds things up a bit as the more tedious processes are automated.
Spry Squared is ready to help if your small business continues to encounter challenges following the CrowdStrike incident.
In other new developments:
And to insult to injury… CrowdStrike’s attempt at an apology offering a ten dollar gift voucher from UberEATS is falling flat with much of their 29,000 customers affected by the global incident. In an email to some of their partners and staff, “To express our gratitude, your next cup of coffee or late night snack is on us!”. Reaction on social media has not been supportive of this gesture claiming a cup of coffee and a snack does not make up for the thousands of man hours businesses have lost to fix this situation, nor does it help to repair the damage to CrowdStrike’s reputation.
