What happens when I decide to take a day off work for my birthday? According to Wikipedia “the largest IT outage in history”. Airlines, banks, hospitals, manufacturing facilities, stock markets, and government services, were among those affected, disrupting essential operations and services. I am pretty sure the two incidents are not related, and I am not taking credit for the reliability of nearly all the IT systems in the world. However I will give every one the heads up before I decide to take another day off!
Widespread disruptions across various industries worldwide were caused by a faulty update to CrowdStrike’s security software. Fortunately we don’t use CrowdStrike at any of our clients, this is not because we have a magic crystal ball and could foresee the upcoming chaos, it could have quite easily happened to one of the vendors we choose in our suite of tools we use to protect our clients.
Businesses of all sizes quickly scrambled IT technicians to resolve the issue. Affected machines could be restored by booting into safe mode or the Windows Recovery Environment and deleting any .sys file beginning with C-00000291- in the %windir%\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike\ directory.
As this process must be done locally on each individual machine, it was “expected to take days” for affected businesses to restore all systems. To make matters worse technical staff will have to reboot the affected computers individually with manual intervention on each system, which could be a monumental task.
As businesses work through to remedy their systems it has become clear that those that will recover first are those that can deploy skilled IT techs quickly and in person. Local IT companies can quickly deploy technicians to client sites, often within short notice. This agility is crucial during urgent situations like system failures, security breaches, or major IT incidents, where immediate resolution can prevent extensive downtime and mitigate potential losses.
For businesses based in central London it can often seem ‘cheaper’ to use an IT company based further afield, even overseas. The real cost of this decision is when the time comes for in person help. Delayed responses, unwillingness to travel, unfamiliarity of the client’s systems can all lead to increased downtime and a direct loss of income. In contrast in-person support allows technicians to directly interact with clients’ IT infrastructure. This hands-on approach enables them to diagnose issues more accurately, implement solutions effectively, and provide personalised guidance to users on-site.
At Mayfair Tech onboarding a client is a two-sided decision. Not only does the client ask themselves if we are the right people to support their business, we also question is this client a good fit for us? Both questions should factor in locality. Local IT companies understand the unique needs and challenges of businesses within their community. They can offer customised IT solutions that align with local regulations, industry standards, and specific business requirements. This tailored approach ensures that clients receive solutions that are not only effective but also relevant to their operations.
If you are based in or near Mayfair, London, please get in touch with us to see how we can help you.
