Welcome back to our Benchmarks for CIOs series. This month, we’re examining the Crowdstrike and Microsoft Azure outages, the growing demand for IT leaders to roll out Copilot, and essential trends across modern IT Asset Management (ITAM), workplace, and cybersecurity as of July, 2024.
Block 64 ITAM data, put to work
This report analyzes data obtained from over 300 organizations across North America using Block 64‘s ITAM management platform. The data offers a snapshot of real-life vulnerabilities, opportunities, and potential challenges across more than 200,000 endpoints. For this edition, we surveyed a new batch of 211,428 endpoints across 348 organizations in North America, providing fresh insights into the current state of IT environments.
So, let’s dive in.
A Historical Month for IT – For All the Wrong Reasons
July 2024 was a challenging month for IT leaders, marked by significant disruptions including a major outage at Crowdstrike and a notable Microsoft Azure outage. These incidents highlighted the critical need for resilience and rapid response capabilities within IT infrastructures.
Impact of CrowdStrike Outage on North American Customers:
For those living under the rocks, CrowdStrike, a leading cybersecurity firm, experienced a significant service interruption due to a technical issue in their update deployment. This outage impacted many organizations globally, highlighting the vulnerabilities even within top-tier cybersecurity providers. According to CrowdStrike, the issue stemmed from a corrupted update file that led to sensor malfunctions across multiple endpoints.
From our scan, we found that CrowdStrike sensors were installed on 43% of systems inventoried. This suggests that up to 18% of our surveyed organizations (63 out of 348 customers) were likely impacted by this outage. The incident underscores the necessity of having a robust ITAM system to quickly identify affected assets and implement corrective measures.
Microsoft Azure Outage:
The Azure outage, which lasted nearly 10 hours, was caused by a combination of a DDoS attack and subsequent internal failures. This disruption had a global impact, affecting businesses dependent on Azure services for their operations. Microsoft reported that the DDoS attack overwhelmed their defenses, leading to cascading failures within their infrastructure.
Lessons and Recommendations:
- Get proactive: Ensure your organization has a rapid response team ready to handle such disruptions. For a deeper dive into resilience strategies, check out our friends at Softchoice’s podcast about resilience and prevention.
- Follow the updates: Read Crowdstrike’s latest update – including details about resuming deployment operations and new options you can choose to decide how you want to receive automatic updates
- Modernize ITAM: Regularly update and audit your ITAM management systems to swiftly identify and mitigate the impacts of outages. Consider leveraging Block 64’s insights and tools to enhance your organization’s resilience against similar incidents.>> Related: Find out why ITAM is modern IT’s secret weapon – Read our blog
IT Leaders Being Pressured to Deliver Copilot, Need Support
As AI continues to transform the business landscape, IT leaders face increasing pressure to develop comprehensive AI adoption plans. Microsoft reports that 60% of Fortune 500 companies have adopted Microsoft 365 Copilot, but many businesses are still navigating their AI strategies.
Current Adoption and Usage:
Our latest data shows that 47% of users are not fully utilizing all Microsoft 365 products, a slight improvement from the previous month’s 49%. Specifically, 68% of users are not using Microsoft Teams, and 55% are not using Microsoft Outlook, reflecting minimal changes from June’s report. Here’s what we suggest:
- Identify key pilot groups within your organization to test Copilot’s functionalities, focusing on teams already using Microsoft 365 products extensively.
- Assess security and licensing impacts as part of the Copilot Readiness Assessment.
Ongoing Security Vulnerabilities Being Overlooked
Security remains a critical concern, with our July 29 report revealing a significant, ongoing presence of critical vulnerabilities across the North American IT landscape.
- 74% of endpoints are critically exposed: The report indicates that 74% of endpoints are exposed to at least one critical vulnerability with a CVSS score of over 9.0, a drastic increase from 60% in the previous month. This spike highlights the escalating security risks faced by organizations.
- AutoCAD Vulnerability: We newly discovered that a critical vulnerability in legacy AutoCAD versions (prior to 2023.1.4 or 2024.1.1) is affecting about 1,000 endpoints across 50 customers. This vulnerability allows maliciously crafted CATPART files to cause crashes, data breaches, or arbitrary code execution.
- SQL and Windows Server Exposures: 37% of organizations are running unsupported SQL servers, and 44% have SQL servers in extended support. Additionally, 52% of organizations still operate unsupported Windows servers, a slight decrease from the previous month’s 53%.
Bottom line: Take action. These security trends necessitate immediate action to strengthen security protocols. Organizations must prioritize regular security audits and updates to mitigate these risks, using a solution such as Block 64’s Security Reports.
Trends in IT Asset Management (ITAM) and Software Asset Management (SAM)
Effective ITAM and SAM is crucial for optimizing resources and maintaining a robust IT infrastructure. This section examines the current trends and highlights areas that need attention.
- Out-of-Warranty Hardware: The percentage of out-of-warranty hardware remains stable at 44%. This indicates that a significant portion of IT infrastructure is aging, potentially leading to higher maintenance costs and increased risk of hardware failures.
- Server Utilization: Servers using less than 25% of available resources stayed consistent at 97% on an endpoint basis. However, from an organizational perspective, there was a significant increase, with 70% of organizations running servers at less than 25% efficiency, up from 60% in June. This jump highlights a growing inefficiency that needs addressing to optimize IT operations and reduce costs.
- Java Exposure: Changes in Oracle’s Java licensing have led many companies to reassess their software usage strategies, potentially increasing expenses by up to 90%. Our findings show that 55% of customers are using a commercial version of Java, slightly down from 56% the previous month.
Putting It Together: ITAM Trends for 2024 Reveal Action Needed
The persistent issues highlighted in this report underscore the urgent need for strategic revisions in IT security and asset management. The first step is gaining insights into your current state to address gaps effectively.
- Leverage Block 64’s platform to illuminate IT blind spots and optimize resources efficiently: Contact us for a demo or sign up for a free trial to start mastering your IT environment.
- For a comprehensive evaluation of your readiness for Copilot adoption, explore our Copilot Readiness Assessment – free if you sign up before August 31, 2024.
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