CrowdStrike, a prominent cybersecurity firm, recently experienced a significant service outage that impacted many of its customers. This situation highlighted the critical importance of having robust IT Service Management (ITSM) and ITIL practices in place to navigate such disruptions effectively. Here’s a look at how adhering to ITSM and ITIL best practices can mitigate customer facing outages such as CrowdStrike's and help companies manage these situations more efficiently.

Understanding the Context:

CrowdStrike provides crucial endpoint protection services, and an outage in their system can have widespread implications for cybersecurity and operational continuity. When a service disruption occurs, customers are left grappling with the immediate fallout and strategizing on how to maintain security and business operations.

1. Major Incident Management Best Practices: Swift Response and Communication

Incident Management is focused on restoring normal service operation as quickly as possible while minimizing the impact on business operations.

Applications During an Outage:

• Robust monitoring systems enable rapid detection and reporting to quickly identify anomalies or service disruptions, and urgently alert response teams.
• A powerful ITSM/ITIL solution quickly establishes clear communication channels to report and track Incidents. This facilitates faster, more informative, and targeted responses and updates.
• ITSM solutions will track the Incident's status, manage communications with stakeholders, and adhere with regulatory and compliance requirements for documentation of actions taken. This ensures stakeholders are aware of progress and next steps.

2. Problem Management Best Practices: Root Cause Analysis and Prevention

Problem Management focuses on identifying the root cause of Incidents and preventing their recurrence.

Applications During an Outage:

• After resolving the immediate impact of the outage, conduct a thorough root cause analysis to understand what went wrong and why. This helps in identifying underlying issues that may not be apparent initially.
• Once the root cause is determined, companies can use their ITSM solution to develop and implement measures that prevent similar issues in the future. These can include automated updates to security protocols, changes in service configurations, or updates to policies and procedures.
• Rapidly identifying and communicating to customers and stakeholders the steps for a Known-Error workaround or resolution minimizes the impact to customers and to the enterprise. ITSM solutions can rapidly push this information to stakeholders via their preferred communication channels such as WhatsApp, SMS, a portal, a mobile application, blog, the company website, and others.

3. Change Management Best Practices: Effective Coordination of Changes

Change Management ensures that Changes to the IT environment are carried out with minimal disruption.

Applications During an Outage:

• During an outage, it is crucial to carefully manage and control Changes and fixes carefully to avoid introducing additional issues and compounding the impact. ITSM Best Practices emphasize testing Changes in a controlled environment before full deployment.
• Ensure that any Changes or updates related to the outage are communicated clearly to all relevant stakeholders. This includes updates on fixes, patches, or adjustments made to restore service.
• Using the ITSM solution to document the specific steps implemented during an Emergency Change, or any Change for that matter, will help protect an organization and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements.

4. Service Continuity Management Best Practices: Ensuring Operational Resilience

Service Continuity Management involves planning and preparing for service disruptions to ensure that critical business functions can continue.

Applications Before and During an Outage:

• Customers should have a well-documented business continuity plan that outlines steps to take during service outages. This plan should include alternative solutions or backup systems to ensure that essential operations can continue. World-class ITSM solutions can automate many of these steps during an actual outage.
• Periodically test the continuity plan and update it based on lessons learned from past Incidents. This ensures that the plan remains relevant and effective in the face of evolving threats and challenges.

5. Service Level Management Best Practices: Monitoring and Reporting on Service Performance

Service Level Management focuses on defining, negotiating and managing service level agreements (SLAs), and ensuring that agreed-upon service levels are met.

Applications During an Outage:

• Companies should review their SLAs with their customers and stakeholders to understand the expected service levels and response times during outages. This helps in managing expectations and holding service providers accountable.
• Monitor performance metrics and service levels continuously. During an outage, having visibility into these metrics can help in assessing the impact and effectiveness of the response. ITSM solutions can provide real-time as well as historical SLA metrics and compliance for continual improvement.

Conclusion

The CrowdStrike outage serves as a stark reminder of the importance of robust ITSM and ITIL practices in managing service disruptions. By implementing effective Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management, Service Continuity Management, and Service Level Management, customers can better navigate such challenges, minimize impact, attain superior compliance, and enhance their overall IT resilience.

Incorporating these best practices into your organization's IT strategy can help ensure that you are better prepared for future disruptions, thereby safeguarding your business operations and maintaining continuity even during challenging times.

Cadalys Service Management™ is robust ITIL/Enterprise Service Management powered by Salesforce. The solution provides enterprises with superior proactivity and responsiveness for outages of all sizes and scope.