In this week’s bulletin, Charlie discusses the recent CrowdStrike outage and discusses the thoughts that other consultants have had on the incident.

When I heard about the CrowdStrike incident, I was in the middle of the kingdom of Fife with my daughter picking up her new puppy. Desperate for the latest, I had her going through BBC Sounds to find  relevant bits of news on the Today programme. As a business continuity consultant, it made me think about how we should react to these types of events. We don’t want to be seen as ambulance-chasing and seeking to profit from other’s misfortune, but on the other side, this is an ideal opportunity to promote what we do and the importance of planning for such events.

I have been watching other consultants to see what they have been putting out on social media. There have been three different groups of responses. Many have commented on the incident and put together some case studies of what has happened. These have varied in quality, from the in-depth comment by Databarracks, to many more superficial pieces.

There have also been commentators who have tried to comment on their own area of expertise, such as crisis management, and have written a commentary on their views on CrowdStrike’s communications. I have quite often done this myself, and on this one, I got into a bit of a discussion with Jonathan Hemus and Timothy Coombe on the finer points of CrowdStrike’s communications. I thought their communications were timely and comprehensive, they thought they lacked empathy and apology in the initial communications.

Other consultants have said nothing on the incident, as writing case studies takes time, effort, and research, and there is the danger that yours may be drowned out by the case studies of multiple consultants and vendors.

My own thoughts are that as it is such a widespread incident, there is no point adding my comments on it, as what I would have to say has probably been said by others, and I like to have original ideas rather than just amplifying others.

Perhaps as a consultant, avoid ambulance-chasing in response to major incidents, but be inwardly smug and think of all the clients in exercises, training and workshops who said that ‘it couldn’t happen’ and think, well, it just has, and I was right!