SchoolInsight Remains Up During Crowdstrike Outage

7/19/24

 

At 12:15AM CT our engineering team identified an issue with one of our web servers caused by the widespread Microsoft outage caused by a bad software update from cybersecurity provider Crowdstrike.

 

Our team immediately went to work and resolved the issue before it was widely reported. As a result of their quick action, SchoolInsight and TeacherEase were unaffected by this global Internet outage.  We’d like to thank our engineers for their dedication, skill, and late night efforts.

 

If you’re curious how other companies fared, feel free to check out https://downdetector.com/. We’d encourage you to search for EdTech and SIS solutions.

 

If you’re not familiar, CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. is an American cybersecurity technology company that provides critical infrastructure. They are considered an industry leader and their solutions are ubiquitous across the internet. 

 

A major benefit of SaaS solutions like SchoolInsight is that vendors manage the technology stack, so customers don’t need to. The downside is customers must trust vendors to take their responsibilities seriously, and appreciate the critical nature of their solutions. It’s challenging to vet vendors’ commitment to excellence in this area, so most customers make decisions based on trust and reputation. We work each day to earn that trust. 

 

While we continue to be committed to providing the best quality products, the widespread Crowdstrike outage should serve as a reminder that all schools need a backup plan for when technology fails. This could be as simple as maintaining paper copies of class rosters, and having a backup process for taking lunch orders. While we’re proud of how our team responded today, no solution is infallible and having backup processes in place will ensure schools are prepared even in the unlikely event of an outage. 

 

 

The Common Goal Team