JJ Eden, executive director of North Carolina Turnpike Authority, gives his opinion on the pros and cons of market dominance, in the wake of the CrowdStrike outage. Is greater competition the answer? Should governments step in? And is there anything we can do to stop another outage of this type? Have your say in our online poll and LinkedIn debate
Every company, organization and individual always strives to provide unique offerings, personalities and traits to ensure they are one step ahead of the others. Very simply put, this is competition in capital markets in action. While sometimes it might seem laborious, redundant and exhausting, open and fair competition is necessary to create an open market, spark creativity and ensure there is never only one option for goods or services. Some might argue this conflicts with the striving for uniqueness. I’d argue competition creates natural tension between
all parties to find a better solution or improve existing products and services.
“We reap the benefits of increased productivity by using the same technology, but…”
Imagine a world with one solution. Growth would be limited. This world would never change because, in part, competition drives the need to change. The consumer would only expect this solution and never demand anything else, and if they did, there would be no way for the consumer to exercise their rights by choosing another solution. It seems like common sense, right? Well, it does, but in technology, we are seeing some entities attempt to monopolize the market. We reap the benefits of increased productivity by using the same technology, but if it fails or is compromised, it can take down entire worldwide systems.
Over the last decade, we have seen the adoption of the cloud resulting in faster business decisions. Now, new applications or workflows are developed in hours and days and not weeks and months, driving innovation. Cloud-based security solutions that protect against malware and viruses provide substantial business benefits to plug zero-day vulnerabilities and provide near real-time security as a service offering.
However, when cloud-based security does not work or there is an untested error that is applied, it can take down major sectors of the world in minutes. In the CrowdStrike outage, the most recent example, the solution was available in less than an hour and major sectors were still down or operating in degraded mode for days. How can one small change cause such massive disruption? Could it be a lack of a competitive market? The offering was simple: to provide an ‘as a service model’ so owners can ‘set it and forget it’. There was no internal competition to challenge a vendor on its process.
Organizations relied exclusively on the vendor without validation or proper testing for their environment; the lack of localized competition and one small mistake caused major disruptions across multiple sectors for days. What if this was a cyberattack and solutions were not provided for days or weeks? What if everyone used just one solution? Would this be the first real-life glimpse of The Walking Dead where people sought essential services such as food and water and could not get currency to buy from markets?
This article also appears in the September 2024 edition of TTi magazine
What’s your view on the CrowdStrike outage? Have your say in our online poll and debate…
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