In July 2024, an $80 billion1 company with a track record of delivering online security for some of the world’s biggest companies rolled out an update that is being called the largest global IT outage in history.
On Friday, July 19, CrowdStrike’s content update caused an outage on 8.5 million Windows devices worldwide. According to Microsoft2, the number makes up less than 1% of all Windows machines in existence.
But while the percentage was small, the damage was significant.
The Damage
The global outage resulted in more than 42,000 flight delays and over 4,700 cancellations, according to real-time flight tracking company FlightAware. Hospitals and healthcare clinics reported missed appointments and abandoned operations, and it severely hampered emergency service response teams, with outages reported across several US states.
It impacted social security, financial systems, public transport, rail travel, sports events, retailers and millions of other businesses around the world. Even broadcasters, renowned for building robust redundancies into their workflows, were left scrambling to get on air with the likes of NBC News, MSNBC, Sky News and the BBC suffering interruption to their advertised broadcast schedules.
In fact, there weren’t many areas of our lives that were unaffected, with figures from cloud risk specialist Parametrix pointing to $5.4 billion in direct losses to Fortune 500 companies alone3.
Reliability
That outage not only highlights our widespread reliance on third-party systems, but it illustrates the dangers of relying on workflows with a single point of failure. More crucially, with connected technology central to all aspects of our lives, it demonstrates the need for resilient connectivity that can operate independently of those third-party systems.
Dejero designs all its systems with multiple layers of resilience, which neither rely on internet connectivity nor have a single point of failure. Its clients operate in the same mission-critical environments that were affected by the recent global IT outage, delivering robust connectivity to broadcasters, emergency management and public order agencies, law enforcement, and security and surveillance.
But Dejero’s clients have something that many of those companies and agencies do not.
Redundant Connectivity
Specializing in resilient connectivity from any location, Dejero provides real-time wireless connectivity for some of the world’s most mission-critical applications. Its Smart Blending Technology™ already delivers dynamic multi-path connectivity by combining cellular, satellite and broadband connectivity to create a reliable virtual ‘network of networks’.
On a very basic level, when network connectivity is affected by external factors such as a network outage, Smart Blending Technology dynamically monitors every available path in real-time to deliver uninterrupted connectivity.
But Dejero has even more layers of redundancy.
Resilient Mode
In the event of a service interruption, Dejero Resilient Mode is a built-in failsafe that ensures uninterrupted remote connectivity for video transmissions even if it can’t connect through the cloud.
By constantly monitoring available networks, Dejero is able to detect service interruption and reroute data to mitigate outages or interruptions. With no manual intervention from the user, Resilient Mode automatically sends live data to the last known server output assignment or receiver [core 5.1 or greater] and enables users to begin live streams even when Control is unavailable. During a service interruption, it informs users that Resilient Mode is in use and provides an option to select from the last ten known assignments or last known receiver and continues sending video that way rather than via the cloud. Furthermore, it reassigns all streams appropriately when service is restored.
Resilient Mode allows field crews to go live, transfer clips or files, communicate via IFB and intercom, and ensure mission-critical services stay live, irrespective of an outage. Supported on devices across the Dejero range, Resilient Mode is automatically activated on the Dejero EnGo 3x, EnGo 3, EnGo 265, VSET and PathWay transmitters, as well as PathWay encoders and FlexPoint transceivers.
Head to dejero.com to download our step-by-step guide
No single point of failure
Even the biggest companies can have a bad day, and even the most trusted organizations can make a mistake.
Dejero was founded on the principle that connectivity is paramount, and features like Smart Blending Technology and Resilient Mode can be the difference between a good and a bad day.
1https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/crowdstrike-global-outage-microsoft-windows-stock-price-b2583222.html
2https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366596373/CrowdStrike-update-snafu-affected-85-million-Windows-devices
3https://www.informationweek.com/cyber-resilience/crowdstrike-outage-drained-5-4-billion-from-fortune-500-report#close-modal
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