A global tech outage hit the world on Friday, reportedly caused by a defect in an update for Microsoft Windows, by US-based technology firm Crowdstrike.
Some government services were hit, flights and airport operations were affected. Residents struggled to purchase groceries or fill up their gas tank as card machines stopped working, and stores only accepted cash. Companies’ daily operations were disrupted as computers displayed the ‘blue screen of death.’
In UAE, the swift response of authorities cushioned the impact, and operations soon resumed.
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Dr Mohammed Al Kuwaiti, Chief Cybersecurity Officer, confirmed that the UAE successfully dealt with the global technical disruption with high efficiency, and quickly overcame this global crisis.
Due to a strategic partnership with the global service provider, Crowdstrike, UAE was able to maintain business continuity while confronting the outage, the chairman said.
All sectors recovered and returned to work optimally, thanks to the strength and flexibility of the country’s digital infrastructure, and compliance with national cybersecurity standards, he added.
Al-Kuwaiti added that the cooperation with Crowdstrike comes within the framework of joint work to build a sustainable cyber future.
He explained that the partnership is based on the three main pillars of cybersecurity, which include:
- People – Spreading a culture of cybersecurity awareness among different segments of society through programmes such as ‘Cyber Pulse’ – spreading best practices, confronting emerging threats and addressing them proactively
- Technology – Harnessing the latest technological tools from Crowdstrike and the National Cyber Operations Centre to detect service disruptions and deal with them using artificial intelligence technologies, cooperation with various service providers and cloud computing companies. The Cyber Security Council was also able to implement rapid solutions and apply continuous monitoring across all sectors to ensure business continuity, said the chairman
- Processes – Standard operating procedures and operational concepts, with the help of the rapid flow of information from Crowdstrike, which enabled clear governance in both the public and private sectors
Dr Al Kuwaiti added that governance facilitated the dissemination of accurate information and prevented the spread of false and misleading information.