Last July, one of the world's largest cybersecurity firms, CrowdStrike, released a routine software update containing a bug that crashed 8.5 million computers worldwide. It was the largest IT outage in history, grounding 17,000 flights, preventing doctors from accessing medical records, interrupting 911 services and plunging broadcasters into blackouts. It compromised more than a quarter of Fortune 500 companies, causing more than US$5 billion in losses.
Such massive outages are rare. But smaller outages and data breaches-due to both accidents and malicious attacks-will happen more often in 2025, as companies increasingly rely on third-party software and suppliers. And those disruptions will occur almost instantaneously, with no warning.
The logic is simple: more complex systems contain more vulnerabilities. For example, software engineers today often rely on open-source code, which performs simple tasks like calculating time zone differences. The code is free and saves time. But it can also be buggy and plagued with compatibility problems, leading to accidental disruptions. This past March, a misconfiguration in OpenSSL-an open-source software library that encrypts a large volume of internet traffic-triggered crashes in web services and databases. It took days to patch the issue.
This story is from the January/February 2025 edition of Maclean's.
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This story is from the January/February 2025 edition of Maclean's.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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