Last Friday, the outage of CrowdStrike’s cybersecurity solution affected much of the world. The chaos was virtually everywhere, but one country avoided the crisis: China.
Crowdwhat? According to the BBC, the Asian giant wasn’t affected by CrowdStrike’s major fail because it hardly uses this security product. The BBC also points out that very few Chinese companies buy security software from a company that has been critical of the cyber threats posed by Beijing.
CrowdStrike has a minimal presence in China. Gartner consultant Gao Geng told CNBC, “The impact of Friday’s CrowdStrike incident on China was very small, with almost no impact on domestic public life. Only a few foreign companies in China were affected.” The company’s customers, he added, are concentrated in Europe and the U.S.
For airports and airlines, it was business as usual. Everything from e-commerce platforms to ride hailing services operated smoothly. Chinese state media boasted that international flights at Beijing’s two airports operated normally. The problems that plagued dozens of airlines worldwide didn’t affect carriers such as Air China, China Eastern Airlines, and China Southern Airlines.
“Splinternet.” In recent years, the trade war between the U.S. and China—and the regime itself—has led the Asian giant to replace foreign IT systems with domestic solutions from companies like Alibaba, Tencent, and Huawei. Some analysts have named this parallel network the “splinternet.”
Isolating Microsoft. According to Singapore-based cybersecurity expert Josh Kennedy-White, “Microsoft operates in China through a local partner, 21Vianet, which manages its services independently of its global infrastructure. This setup insulates China’s essential services—like banking and aviation—from global disruptions.”
National security. China claims that not using foreign solutions guarantees national security. The U.S. uses the same argument to ban companies like Huawei, which could also lead to changes in the future of TikTok in this country.
Chinese media has criticized the incident. The state-run Global Times published an editorial on Saturday saying, “Some countries constantly talk about security, generalize the concept of security, but ignore real security; this is ironic.” It added: “Relying solely on top companies to lead network security efforts, as some countries advocate, may hinder not just the inclusive sharing of governance outcomes but also introduce new security risks.”
This article was written by Javier Pastor and originally published in Spanish on Xataka.
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