Microsoft, CrowdStrike To ‘Come Together’ For September Windows Security Event

The planned Sept. 10 event at Microsoft’s Redmond headquarters comes after the massive, unprecedented Windows outage in July caused by a faulty CrowdStrike update.

Microsoft said Friday it has scheduled a Windows security event for September that will feature CrowdStrike, following the massive Windows outage in July caused by a faulty update from the cybersecurity vendor.

The planned Sept. 10 event has been dubbed the Windows Endpoint Security Ecosystem Summit, and will take place at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Wash., a Microsoft executive said in a blog post.

“Microsoft, CrowdStrike and key partners who deliver endpoint security technologies will come together for discussions about improving resiliency and protecting mutual customers’ critical infrastructure,” wrote Aidan Marcuss, corporate vice president for Microsoft Windows and devices, in the post.

The goal of the event is “to discuss concrete steps we will all take to improve security and resiliency for our joint customers,” Marcuss said.

In a statement provided to CRN Friday, a CrowdStrike spokesperson said that “we look forward to bringing our perspective to the discussions with Microsoft and industry and government stakeholders on the need for a more resilient ecosystem.”

In the Microsoft blog post, Marcuss wrote that “the CrowdStrike outage in July 2024 presents important lessons for us to apply as an ecosystem.”

“Our discussions will focus on improving security and safe deployment practices, designing systems for resiliency and working together as a thriving community of partners to best serve customers now, and in the future,” he wrote.

Microsoft also plans to host unspecified “government representatives” to “ensure the highest level of transparency to the community’s collaboration to deliver more secure and reliable technology for all,” Marcuss said.

“It is expected that the Windows Endpoint Security Ecosystem Summit will lead to next steps in both short- and long-term actions and initiatives to pursue, with improved security and resilience as our collective goal,” he wrote.

In the days after the July 19 outage, Microsoft executive John Cable wrote in a blog that the unprecedented incident “shows clearly that Windows must prioritize change and innovation in the area of end-to-end resilience.”

“These improvements must go hand in hand with ongoing improvements in security and be in close cooperation with our many partners, who also care deeply about the security of the Windows ecosystem,” wrote Cable, vice president of Windows servicing and delivery at Microsoft, at the time.

Cable also touched on the role of third-party access to the Windows kernel, which is seen as having been a key factor behind the incident. He pointed to recently announced capabilities that “provide an isolated compute environment that does not require kernel mode drivers to be tamper resistant” — which helps to show “what can be done to encourage development practices that do not rely on kernel access.”

The July 19 outage, which had lingering impacts for much of the following week, saw 8.5 million Windows devices suffer the “blue screen of death” and become inoperable until they were fixed manually by an IT professional.

The societal impacts were wide-ranging—with major disruptions to air travel, health care and many other sectors—and estimates have suggested the costs to major corporations will reach into the billions of dollars.

CrowdStrike has pledged to do additional testing and deploy staged rollouts of updates, with the aim to prevent such issues in the future.