Some shouty headlines tell us that 20% of the world’s computers were taken down by the CrowdStrike problem. Well, not really. Microsoft say the true figure is about 8.5 million – still a lot, but closer to 1% than 20%.
So, what & why? CrowdStrike is a high-end PC protection suite (think anti-virus and more) which is supposed to protect key Windows systems from falling foul of the bad guys & maintain high levels of availability. Oh, the irony.
On 19 July CrowdStrike released an update for its software. Due to an error in the update millions of Windows PCs around the world crashed. The reason it was so devastating is in the innocent phrase ‘high-end’. This meant it was a favourite for important systems, such as banks, airlines and so on. Hence the huge impact on the public & the economy. Read up on it here.
But here’s my question. Why is none of this stuff tested properly? Call me old fashioned, but if I wrote a bit of code that caused my test PC to go into a permanent sulk I’d probably think twice before punting it out to 8,500,000 customers.
We’re seeing more of this. Products that break almost as soon as they are out of the box. Clearly they haven’t been tested in anything like a rigorous manner. It seems that, in this post-truth world, testing is old-fashioned, restrictive, time-consuming & expensive. And, conveniently for the bottom line, can be dispensed with. Trip to see the Titanic in an untested & unlicensed submarine anyone? I’m sure there were loads of people who thought it was cool & modern to sidestep all the boring testing & validation mandated for these things. Not so much now, eh?