How badly were you affected by the recent CrowdStrike outage? For some, they could continue business as usual; for others, it meant no work could be done as system-critical computers were stuck in a BSOD limbo. Fortunately, with CrowdStrike releasing an update and Microsoft offering a helping hand with its own recovery drive, the effects of this critical error have finally subsided. And now that the dust has settled, Microsoft has taken the time to make its voice heard as it gives businesses a run-down on how they can keep safe from future incidents.

Microsoft advises companies on how to keep their systems safe from future issues

As the company details on the Microsoft Tech Community, it states that it received "thousands of calls with organizations around the world" as it tried to help companies out of the CrowdStrike issue. Microsoft took note of what countermeasures companies had set up against such an incident, specifically the ones that allowed the organization to get back on its feet as quickly and easily as possible. Microsoft then detailed what these countermeasures were on its blog, allowing others to learn from the CrowdStrike incident and how best to handle similar ones in the future.

Microsoft noticed that six countermeasures in particular were especially helpful:

1. Having a business continuity planning (BCP) and a major incident response plan (MIRP) set up before the issue occurred.
2. Having regular and thorough data backups.
3. Using Windows system restore points to undo any issues with the operating system.
4. Using deployment rings to manage incoming updates and slowly roll them out to the rest of the company if they're stable.
5. Use Windows' default security settings.
6. Moving away from on-premises PCs and utilizing cloud-based solutions.

Now that CrowdStrike has died down, companies are likely looking for ways to prevent a similar outage from happening again. Hopefully, with Microsoft's directives, the CrowdStrike issue will be one of the last of its kind.