If you’re anything like me, you had frantic friends or family last week — flights canceled, hospital records inaccessible, public transit MIA… You might not have heard of CrowdStrike previously, but you sure have now. They released an update that caused all sorts of chaos, and (unfortunately for them) it’s a great lesson in how important QA testing is when it comes to critical software systems. Let me break it down:

What exactly happened?

CrowdStrike is one of the biggest names in cybersecurity. We’re huge fans of their work, and they’re an industry leader for a reason. That said, even the big boys make mistakes (and the bigger you are, the farther reaching those mistakes tend to be).

On what was otherwise an ordinary day, CrowdStrike rolled out an update meant to beef up their security software. Instead, it ended up causing massive headaches. Flights were delayed or canceled, hospitals couldn’t access patient records, and many other critical services were disrupted. While it provides a good lesson in decentralizing critical software services (aka, don’t just use the same vendor that every other system relies on), that’s not the purpose of this post. What we want to highlight is how this situation might have been avoided altogether.

As we all have now seen, the update had a bug in its code. CrowdStrike’s goal was to add new security features, but they missed a compatibility issue that caused systems to crash. Blue screens of death were all over the news as Windows systems the country over crashed entirely.

It’s a stark reminder that even the best in the business can slip up if they don’t test thoroughly.

How They Fixed It

Once CrowdStrike figured out what went wrong, their engineers worked non-stop to create and release a patch. They teamed up with affected clients to get everything back on track as quickly as possible. Despite their quick response, the whole mess might have been avoided with more rigorous QA testing.

Why Rigorous QA Testing Matters

This incident is a textbook example of why QA testing is so crucial. QA isn’t just a box to tick; it’s a vital step to prevent disasters. Before any update goes live, it needs to be tested thoroughly in a controlled, safe environment.

How We Do It at Leverage Technologies

At Leverage Technologies, we get it. Protecting our clients’ operations is priority number one. If you can’t operate because your IT systems are down, you’re losing money — simple as that. That’s why we never push updates or new features to the production environment without first running them through our rigorous testing process. Here’s our playbook:

1. Isolated Testing: We use a test environment that’s a perfect twin of our clients’ live setups. This helps us catch issues without affecting real operations.
2. Beta Deployment: New updates first go live in this controlled space, where we keep a close eye on performance and compatibility. This way, we catch bugs early.
3. Client-Specific Simulations: We run simulations that mimic our clients’ actual usage scenarios. This ensures updates fit their specific needs and potential issues are sorted out.
4. Continuous Monitoring: After deployment, we keep monitoring to make sure everything runs smoothly and any sneaky issues are caught fast.

Thanks to these steps, we can confidently say our clients’ live environments stay safe from the kind of disruptions CrowdStrike faced.

Final thoughts

The CrowdStrike outage is a loud and clear reminder of how important QA testing is. Speed and innovation are great, but they should never compromise reliability and security. At Leverage Technologies, we’re all about making sure our clients rarely (if ever) face these kinds of disruptions. Our thorough approach to QA testing shows our commitment to delivering secure and dependable tech solutions.

The way software systems work now, even a tiny glitch can cause massive problems. So, let’s take a lesson from this incident and make rigorous testing a priority to keep our critical systems safe and trustworthy.

If you’d prefer disruptions like this don’t happen to your business, maybe it’s time to give us a call?