Mitigating the Billion-Dollar Bug: Lessons from Outages

The era of the “billion-dollar bug” is here. Some might argue it had already arrived, but nothing quite captured the broad attention of the industry like the global CrowdStrike outage. The CrowdStrike incident, which affected millions of devices and disrupted critical services worldwide, shone a bright light on the interconnectedness and vulnerability of our modern systems.

However, the CrowdStrike outage is a symptom of a larger problem, one that persists today for organizations that fail to take a cue from the headlines. Even small oversights in software updates, testing approaches and vendor strategy can have immense consequences. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Let’s explore lessons learned from the incident, focusing on how businesses can protect themselves from future failures through improved documentation, comprehensive testing and transparent processes.

Effective documentation and process governance

The CrowdStrike outage underscored the importance of meticulous documentation and strong process governance. When changes aren’t properly documented or reviewed, even minor errors can quickly escalate into major failures. This is especially true for core infrastructure that supports critical business operations.

For example, if a configuration change in a widely deployed security product isn’t clearly documented or peer-reviewed, it can affect millions of endpoints very quickly, making recovery even more complicated. Robust documentation doesn’t just help prevent mistakes; it accelerates the incident response and resolution process. Detailed process governance, including standardized reviews, risk assessments and peer evaluations, creates a safety net. Organizations with clear, documented procedures are far better equipped to respond quickly to emerging issues, minimizing damage and business disruptions.

Comprehensive regression testing

The CrowdStrike incident also highlighted the dangers of insufficient testing before rolling out updates. The comprehensiveness of their testing is somewhat unclear, but the scale of the outage makes evident that the testing process failed to account for every potential issue — especially some severe outcomes. This is a common problem across industries — teams push updates without adequate validation in environments that mimic real-world conditions.

A major oversight in testing environments is often the lack of diverse conditions, such as varied hardware setups, software versions and even regional differences in deployment. To prevent large-scale disruptions, teams must conduct comprehensive regression testing, and not just on the parts of the software being affected. When testing in sandbox environments, make sure they are an appropriate size and scale to reduce the potential impact of the changes. Validate all possible real-world scenarios across a wide range of devices, OS configurations and geographic locations. Real-world validation is critical for ensuring that even minor updates don’t introduce unforeseen bugs that could jeopardize critical systems, leading to disastrous financial and reputational impacts.

Ebook

Staged rollouts and rollback mechanisms

Phased rollouts, such as A/B testing or canary rollouts, safeguard against widespread failures. Instead of gradually introducing updates to smaller groups of users, CrowdStrike appeared to deploy changes broadly, leaving no room to catch the issue early. We all know what happened after that.

Staged rollouts not only limit the scope of the failure but also provide an opportunity to identify subtle issues that may not surface during initial testing. Canary testing can catch issues in real-world environments, allowing for immediate and automatic rollback before the full customer base sees the effects. Rollbacks must be seamless and fast. For companies dealing with millions of endpoints, bake these rollback mechanisms into the release strategy. We see examples of successful companies using staged rollouts all the time, including a popular car manufacturer, which is so deliberate with their rollouts that it might take weeks or months for everyone to get the entire update. Better than a PR nightmare.

Multi-vendor strategy

Another crucial takeaway from the CrowdStrike incident is the risk of relying too heavily on a single vendor. The CrowdStrike customers that were hit hardest were the ones that relied solely on that one vendor, as they were left without alternatives. This vulnerability highlights the need for companies to diversify their vendor base, especially when it comes to critical systems like security and endpoint protection.

Vendor diversification doesn’t just mitigate risk during an outage; it also allows businesses to maintain greater control over their infrastructure. For instance, by adopting a multi-vendor strategy, organizations can switch between different security providers or endpoint solutions in the event that one fails or goes out of business, ensuring operational resilience. Multi-vendor strategies also introduce healthy competition among providers, driving innovation, price parity and high standards. 

As part of incident response planning, businesses should regularly review their dependency on any single vendor, paying particular attention to that vendor’s approach to fault tolerance and redundancy. Large vendors typically offer a variety of failback options to ensure that a single point of failure doesn’t jeopardize the entire business operation. Whatever your choice of vendor, scrutiny goes a long way.

Transparency and communication

Transparency helps maintain trust with customers, especially in the midst of a failure or outage. Communication about the root cause and remediation efforts should be swift and clear. A lack of transparency will only exacerbate the outage’s impact and sow distrust among customers.

Companies should prioritize open communication during and after major incidents. Providing timely updates, clear explanations of the issue and detailed plans for remediation helps reassure customers and partners. System reliability is paramount in a world with entangled, interconnected products and apps, and trying to bury the truth only worsens the outcome. Leading organizations, such as Amazon and Microsoft, have mastered the art of transparent communication during outages. They issue regular, detailed updates through multiple channels, including public-facing dashboards. This level of transparency is not only a good business practice but may soon become a regulatory requirement. Businesses should read the tea leaves to understand how oncoming regulation might affect them.

Protect your business from the billion-dollar bug

The global CrowdStrike outage was a wake-up call, showing how quickly a minor flaw can escalate into a billion-dollar problem. And, to emphasize the point, it’s far from unique in its ability to cause widespread damage and revenue loss — similar system failures are just a blind eye away.

Customers and vendors alike should prioritize proper documentation, invest in comprehensive testing and adopt best release practices to mitigate the effects of these types of failures.

Skimping on testing can have disastrous effects. Applause’s global community of digital experts provides businesses with the opportunity to test updates, bolster test coverage and gather user feedback for every release. We’re passionate about digital quality, helping businesses to release with confidence in the markets and on the devices they require. Stay vigilant in your digital quality strategy to avoid costly mishaps and brand damage.