Another global computer outage is “not impossible,” says a Colorado professor. Here’s how you can prepare.

CrowdStrike, a major player in cybersecurity, released an automatic update to its protection software that did not go as planned, causing worldwide disruption and concerns about digital security and our dependence on computers.

“The software happened to have some bugs, or at least one serious bug, that caused a large number of Windows hosts running the software to get a blue screen of death, which basically means Windows won’t boot,” said Nathan Evans, a professor of computer science and cybersecurity at the University of Denver who is also director of the cybersecurity program there. “It basically froze a large number of Windows machines.”

According to Evans, the bug in the update is likely due to insufficient testing before deployment.

“Unfortunately, nobody writes perfect software, and so software bugs happen,” Evans said. “I think in this case they probably made a mistake by releasing an update or patch that wasn’t tested thoroughly enough. So the solution in this case would have been for them to do a lot more testing before releasing that update.”

Evans says that while such incidents are rare, another global incident of this kind is “not impossible.”

“We can’t say for sure if something of this magnitude will happen again, but it’s not impossible that it could happen again. People just need to be vigilant and make sure they test all their software before they release updates and patches to try to make sure something like this doesn’t happen in the future,” Evans said.

To be prepared for future incidents, Evans suggests some important steps for both companies and individuals.

“We are completely dependent on technology and computers for a lot of things. I think fundamentally that’s a good thing because when you think about how much it makes our lives easier and how much it makes our jobs easier, people should always be thinking in the back of their minds, ‘What happens if I lose my computer tomorrow and what impact that would have?'” Evans said. “I think every individual and every organization needs to be aware that something like this can happen and have plans in place to recover from it.”

Evans added: “For example, it’s always a good idea to have offline copies of important medical or banking documents and to make backups of all important files on your computer. Also, make sure you don’t store anything you absolutely need in an emergency in just one place, especially not digitally.”

The CrowdStrike update that caused the chaos on Friday was automatically released to Microsoft Windows customers.

Evans says that while it’s generally good to be signed up for automatic updates to protect your computer from cyberattacks or viruses, experts say going forward, taking proactive steps can help mitigate potential impacts. This includes keeping up to date with updates from software vendors and not installing them immediately until their stability is confirmed.