Welcome back. Thank you. Once again for hanging out with us. This is the 1 and only It in the d show I'm your host Bob Wall and should spiel hanging out with the Ill 1 c host producer extraordinary Randy walker. Guest this week, Tom Lawrence is in the house. We're gonna be talking all things, crowds strike, fasten your seat belts. This 1 is going to be a do. You can find this online, It, and the d. Dot com do us a favor Give us a like on the socials subscribe to us everywhere.
Find podcasts are sold. Don't forget meetup up dot com. Slash it. We got 2 more at Nancy Whiskey in Detroit. Third Thursday, 05:00 until question Mark, no speakers, no cover. Just some It folks. Good crowd usually. We actually got to enjoy the patio for once. He didn't not get rained out. Like, the last of the 5 times we've gotten rained out. And we are we had good weather. So, yeah, I was actually, like, 70 twos was fantastic evening. Yeah. Good job too. A lot of new people.
Yeah. Absolutely. Speaking of getting rained out Friday, morning was was interesting that this past week. Everybody's phones were buzzed around Right. Whenever you wake up for me it was about 07:15 in the morning for some people, it was 4 5 in the morning. The very first thing when I look at Linkedin when I wake up in the morning, see a post from Tom. And Tom going, oh shit, here's a meet... Not only here's a fix, but here's a meme
that we're gonna that... We're gonna make fun of crowds strike, and we're gonna tell you how to fix it. And that is so you. I appreciate you for it, and thank you for getting me out of didn't have a Jam Friday morning, but a lot of other people didn't they. Yeah, Your post. I think it's up to, like, 3500 likes or something. My comment is, like, a hundred likes. Like, what the world did you do. But Tom good to see you again, man it's been too long? Yeah. It's been... It's been almost a year.
We we realize it's been a year. Almost of the day since I was on here last, but, yeah, Glad to be back. Glad that crowds is, well, their stock isn't settling, up, it's settling down, but some of the problems are settling away at least. I didn't see what they were finally closed at. I am going to rip off the band aid. And just at... I gotta ask the dumbest questions imaginable. Like, who... Like, I don't wanna just blame Crowds because Microsoft has a hand in this So we'll get
that we'll get there in a minute. Yeah. But, you know, who, looks like Crowds is down 13 percent just today ouch. So it's been what over the last 5 days, they're down 30 percent. So from about 3 78, and they're closing at 02:60. Oh, so, almost a hundred of share. That's a lot. So we gotta find the track on who shorted it. But, like, for 1, this is this is dumb sale. I'm gonna ask dumb sales guy questions. You're gonna you're gonna set the world straight. I know better than to launch
production updates on Fridays. It's it's pretty much a cardinal sin and It since the dawn of time. What Mah hell happened, Tom. We're kinda waiting some analysis from crowds strike on that. They gotta kinda reveal to us exactly what what mechanism failed. They do the normal like can canary release cycles. They update percentages of customers at a time. See if the world's on fire with those customers before they push the rest.
But this is different. This is just a strange update that seems to have just gone to everyone simultaneously. And they actually pushed a rollback button almost immediately. So someone someone knew. Oh, Someone knew right away. It wasn't like there was this long delay. There was a, oh, you know, let's start rolling this back. Let's push this update. And the fact that they knew so quickly, I mean, someone knew exactly why. It's really interesting though, but there's no
validation in their codes. So these are modules that loads the crowds agent loads it loads these modules, and these modules essentially are ways, so they don't have to sign the driver with Microsoft each time. They can just add these updates to it, but it also revealed that there's no validation of these. There's not, like a, hey, Let's see if this works before I apply it like, pre test system. It just tells, I'll load whatever for you drop here.
Awesome. And then when a computer goes into a boot loop, not awesome. So Mike, how many, like, there's the ecosystem in Microsoft, though, Like, the 1 of the big thing was, how do they let this happen? Because when I first got my first text, it was someone from work going up. Microsoft's got out. So then I find out... Oh, it's not. There. It's
it's it's a plug in. How do... How does Microsoft... I know they're not abs absorbed from this, and and everyone I know is taking blame for it themselves saying, hey, you know, m 3 64 and they're kinda making jokes of themselves. But how do they let this happen? Well, there was a... This goes back to 2009. There's actually a good debate over on Linkedin. A few people from Microsoft, their product people and engineers had weighed in us, including, Kevin Beaumont and who also tweets as Cassie see
the dog. He's a longtime time Microsoft insider turned great meme poster when he left Microsoft. And he calls them out on her Bs all the time. But he was right when he was talking about what happened there was in Circa 2009, Microsoft started pushing in Windows to defender. I camera remember what it was called then it had some... It was called patch something. There was this whole controversy because they were
gonna lock all these security vendors out. And security vendors raised a ru and the Eu put pressure on them, it never actually went to Court. But in the end, they allowed security vendors to hook into the Microsoft Colonel at the same level the Microsoft did. This is where their problems kinda began because that's the only way you can really secure Microsoft then actually circa a 2009 I. There's no way to really say that their defender product. It was
always a joke back then. It's actually a much better product here at 20 24, but it wasn't then. So locking other security vendors out and making them interface with Microsoft Security tooling wasn't gonna make any security vendors happy. So Microsoft cap and said fine. We know if we lock you out, we're gonna end up in another trust suit. They already had several going ones. So they said, fine. We'll let the colonel vendors in here.
And overall, besides the, almost a year later, Mccarthy having a false positive update in 2010, we haven't had any mass outage like that for a security vendor that loads in the curb. At least no major 1 I'm positive. There's some small security vendor, some cheap Av company. There's probably screwed this up. But not only the big people and involved in this game. The conspiracy theorist in me, you know, because... Here's the thing defender is actually a viable product today. You kinda
hit the nail on the head. Where today it... Where we let... There was the running joke of the world up until a few years or then you're, like, wait, what? And then wait what? And all of a sudden, it's pretty much part of everybody's security strategy in 1 way shape or form. Yeah. We always joked that antivirus companies were, like, ghost busters where they hired, like, Ukrainian hackers to release some some bullshit malware,
and then they'll go... We will fix it because their sales always spiked. Is there any is there any rumbling of any funny businesses to, like, you know, Microsoft kind of, you know, turning their suit... They're... You know, I guess they're an ally and a competitor at the same time, but it, like, turning them into parking lots. Is there any you hearing and anything out there?
No. But I I mean, there's a great level of amusement that the Ceo of Crowds was a Ceo of Mca mccarthy when they had their incident in 2010. So I mean, that's kind of funny. He he bounced and founded crowds strike after a big Mca mccarthy incident. So I was like, wait a minute. This is another exit for him she...
Yeah. I... It's all of those things that there's... I love all the different conspiracies because Microsoft, We would have been talking about pretty large Microsoft storage server outage that occurred just before. I don't know if the 2 are related in any way. And it would've have made the news if it wasn't for the fact Everyone else went a offline right after that just by coincidence. Because the Github went down as part of the Microsoft 1 and Remember was like, oh,
github down. We can't do any coding Thursday night and, you know, it was a big deal, but that that was like, oh, that was not even a blip in the news compared to compared to the fact that Delta is still trying to recover and sell airlines. Like, it's a mess if you have to fly anywhere. I am so glad I don't have to fly till weeks. I'm hoping. They haven't sorted up by that. I have someone's... I know I know someone that is stranded in Nashville.
For, like, 2 and a half days. I'm like, at, what point is this that become planes trains in automobiles and you go rent yourself k car? And you know, go go hitch or ride. Like, like, yeah. You know, unless you unless you're using as an excuse to hit downtown Nashville, which which I don't... I which I wouldn't blame in them either. Yeah. So timeline, when did the first, like, oh, shit happen? Was it like 2 in the morning,
3 in the morning? I think it was right around for or Yeah I'm hearing, like, around that time. This was right around there. Was just a little bit after a midnight Eastern standard time. So I'm guessing maybe they push it out on what might be California time, maybe a little bit early. Not... I didn't get the exact time, but it confused so many people. I talked to a lot of my friends that were in you know, had crowds strikes. They work at very large companies.
And that's where this is so bad. Is the fact that it's not on my computer. It's probably not a your computer, Bob, but the the Fortune 500. Yeah. They love Crowds. This... It is at the biggest of the big companies all the time. Well, that's the thing like, first thing, of course, me being sales guy. First thing I thought is, oh, god. Like, I feel for all of my friends, customers, colleagues that are gonna have to field hundreds of phone calls going.
Hey. I got an alternative to crowds strike and... Okay. Thank god I saw a lot of posts from my my sales brother and saying, please be please don't be that guy. Set 1 reps and and and the like. Like, please be better, don't come at it with this. Whole, like, we have an alternative. I hope that they're better. I didn't hear any war stories, but like, it's a it's
it's funny. I don't I don't worry about the data center guys up till you know, up all night, not sleeping, living on Red bull fixing and I worry about my you know, my buddy's getting hammered by shitty sales reps. Let me tell you. Yeah. I... I was gonna say, when I heard the news Friday morning, I woke up, scroll social media saw that out outrage Was, like, cool day off work, I get in into the office and know. My computer is still working? I was like dang it? Why
why am I not down? Why why did I not have to suffer this or enjoy it? I I thought there was a few classy things that some companies did. I've seen some of them offering free lunches going, hey, we're just... We see you're in a lot of trouble. Let us have by a lunch, we'll give you some gift cards. Is these some kinda of cool things people offer help to an
extent. You know, gotta kinda support that staff that's working those extra shifts to of, remember exactly what process you use on the server to get back in there and delete files manually. Right. Is we Compliance has actually worked against us in this, generally speaking the frameworks require that most of the computers have encryption, that's fun because it turns out booting them up and deleting a file when you're encrypted well, now you're gotta have a really long encryption key, you got
a key in. By hand. Who knows and who yeah, no 1. Who knows that? Where is it's... And where is it sitting? It's sitting in your. Right. Mh. Oh, yeah. There was a couple stories of it tied together, like, the system that they stored him was also tied to their core active directory system that was died. Somebody couldn't log into it to get it out. Luckily, the fix was... I mean, it was, like, what 1234 steps, something like that and it wasn't you know, for someone me that that does
not, like, getting into bios, Like, it... You know, I would do it scared shaking, but, like, it wasn't it wasn't the worst thing in the world that could you get it back on mind. What was was there any other workarounds? Or was that pretty much the defined... Like,
Well, yeah. The vibe crown is just deleting that 1 update file, and once it doesn't find it, but the challenge especially was with the larger companies when you host your desktops and you host your servers in the cloud, You're used to using all the remote management tools for manage. Up, you're going wait a minute. How do I get to the console in my Azure or Aws system. And if you don't do that very often because how can you do, it's it's pre deployed. Here's
your Rd p session. Here's your a Vpn to connect to it, Once you actually have to get to, like, the... There is a way to get, like, a serial type actual console on these systems, but it's... So infrequently used is more of those dust out the manual and look up the instructions how of do it, which, of course then slows things down because they're like, Who knows how to do this? Was that 1 that 1 old dude here years ago that knew how do it. Did he write it down? Where's the login for this?
Tell me about the days of Aol. Can you tell me about talk to you about comp you serve 1 more time. I don't want any... Is anyone... Here's the thing I don't want anyone losing their gigs over this. Here in crowds is... Has not never historically been friends with the sales community. Meaning, you go there. You usually have a good... You know, you're there for a year and a half you get
broom out. Like, if you look at any security sales guys, resume, crowds strikes in there somewhere for a year and a half. But I don't wanna see anybody. You know, I think I had... Like, I checked. I think I have 9 connections at work there. I don't wanna see anybody losing their gig. What's. What's the market doing right now? Everybody saying get this shit out of here? Or are we just, like... Is it kinda like the target breach where we're like, I'm still gonna shop at Target on Monday?
I... Yeah. And I think, you know, Target breaches a funny 1 too because no one's gonna remember the guy that did it? Because, you know, who... What does the name of the Hvac company that caused the breach or target. Nobody knows. So Target had a breach It was at that Hvac company. So knows you know who inside did it, Crowds gonna take a huge and as we talked about the stock and getting a huge reputation I don't know that the person or people
involved will still be there. Maybe they will, Maybe they'll be polishing your resumes right now. That's gonna be interesting because obviously, they learned quite the expensive lesson. And I think what we're really gonna see is how do the lawsuits look, that's... Obviously, some people were on there because there's... This immediately broke Sla agreements and everything else. So you what do you do? You pass the buck up there. You have your shared
responsibility matrix. Alright. If you took down my systems, you are responsible for it. This is AE0 because it wasn't a tax gonna be under arrows errors arizona emission insurance. They're gonna have to start making claims. So all these companies that broke. Medical facilities for systems down, all these things. It's kind of a, hairy mess because they're gonna go claim to their insurance for loss of business that's gonna go back to Crowds to how do you cover this? Yep.
Well, it looks like too. I'm just reading the house committee already calling on the Crowds Ceo to test a 5. Yeah. And I'm just curious. Well, if he came from Mca, he might be tech savvy, but I'm just saying like, they're gonna, you know, between a house committee that doesn't know technology to a Ceo that isn't in the weeds, Like, isn't... Wouldn't you rather have... In not even the Cto, like, I'm talking get 1 of the... Why why... When these house committee things happen, it just...
When they had Zuckerberg on the stand and the questions they were asking, were, like, You know, what is it? We sell ad senator? Was that the famous rebuttal from Zuckerberg. But, like, what Yeah. What what what could the house committee possibly? Get in terms of resolve from a Ceo of this company this of this size. Well, the same thing they got out of United. So they have the United health guy, and I thought someone photoshop this. I've seen us floating around on
Twitter. It was an image of a senator. Holding and at a, hacking for dummies book, and I was, like, please tell me that's a joke. So I went over to Seas span, jumped to the time stamp in a minute when at Center. Was under him, like, and he had that book, and he was just holding it up like a bible and pounding on it. That was just like, oh, god. This is wonderful. And that's what Mean most of these life on are not.
Like, I consider myself not a dummy when it comes to this stuff because I know the nerds that, you know what I mean can speak. Options different languages around me with it. And and I'm, you know, and I'm in the business. So, like, imagine, like, someone, like, a a senator that's just been a career politician, Like, Yeah. You think they would, again, what are they gonna... And what... Were are you gonna get out of it? Yeah. We messed up. Yeah. We did this thing.
You know, 1 of the things I wanted to talk about is, like, who's, chatting with and I'm, like, do you think for a second that they're gonna put a head on a block? Like, they're gonna go. It was Timmy. Timmy rolled the release out. He said, we told them not to. Like, is it that simple as like Johnny and airplane going, Oops, sorry and plug it back in? Like is it that simple? That's 1 guy? Like, did this, like, I I don't think so. And I really think
in this... Okay. There's a slight conspiracy here. I've read. Now these people have posted with levels of anonymity. But there is claims that Crowds strike has been a hard push for automated edition. And in a lot of these automated systems to release this data. So it... Sounds like in... If that is true that they've automated it so much. It's a failure in the automation system that rolled this out.
So whether or not 1 person's gonna be in there or there's gonna be 1 person who says, I don't want all of you guys validating it. That's a that's terrible waste of all the resources having humans look at this system.
And that could be a result. I I can believe that that actually is pretty plausible as far as conspiracies that there's some automation system that fail that doesn't have the proper validation checking and it, it screwed up or, you know, go a little further, We talked about the Microsoft storage server outage. What if they were using the Microsoft storage server. What if they were attached to it. It broke. It came back online, and it was broken with some file and the automated
system goes, hey, look, a new file. Only half of a file, but Hey, let's send it because we don't have human checking it. So going back to the, like, my very first question to you is, like dummy here talking again. This... And you're talking about pushing automation, which brought me up to thinking about this. Like, these type of kernels and this type when it's automated to push out. This isn't like
a software rollout. Right? Where they're where they're testing in sandbox and then going through Qa process and then launching and prod. This is this is... These are just pushes slash update slash on the fly live. This is not... I I should not be thinking about these things the same way I'm thinking about software. Am I correct? Yeah. So it's really interesting because my... And... I'm not a crowds user, but from people I talk to, you... In a lot of
places you have an n minus 1. So you're gonna wait 1 day for the update to come through. And for some reason, this particular update seemed to ignore that. That's my understanding from that. Which this is why everyone got hit so hard. So if you were on a delayed update system, you were supposed to still wait, so you can do some validation testing, because what they'll do is
you'll have some set... Your critical... Most critical systems will be on this delayed update, but you'll have other similar systems that are aren't. That way, if you see it happen to your test environment, your lab, environment, whatever those ones that are on the real time updates, you can pull the plug. But but it doesn't appear to be the case with this incident where everyone seem to get the same file update that broke everyone's
at once. So I've been hurt I've have heard that they ignored policies on this. I do know that Cis was immediately involved the government cyber command was involved. And as I few friends, that... I I learned so much from them who work in the hospitals and worked at these very, very large. 1 of them is a competitor for United Health. That level of scale hospitals. And he's got 250000 points. He's responsible or so Yeah. So he's happy. They... Are not particularly.
Crowds was under their lit shortlist on they're not using it right now. Yeah. But they still took down ancillary systems because these hospital. Yeah. The the hospitals is what he manages, but inside the hospitals there's, you know, like, your different, What do you call those, the pill dis, the labs and everything that are done are, like, that connect to their network. A lot of them use crowds strike and neighbor down. Jeez. Did you... I'm looking right now at r slash programming.
And did you watch the video as Crowds It outage explained by a Windows developer Yeah. Dave is great. Dave Plumber. He explained the problem with the way things are in the Kernel. He didn't get into any of them mention of why things are allowed in Colonel It was at 2009 thing that Microsoft did. But his explain was top notch in terms of it. Dave's pretty awesome. I've actually chatted him a few times. So it says, like, you know, it because this
is this has happened before. They're showing to 2023, twice, 2019, 2024 or in April? Other... What was the difference now between those because we didn't hear anything about those? So there is some, a history that they have where they have broke the Linux kernel. This is actually 1 of the biggest selling points. The competitors have had, Crowds strike on Linux is kind of disaster. It's not well it's it's always like a
maintenance problem on there. We just hear less about it because of the way the updates are loaded and picture your average just window system versus Linux sis admin men, the Linux. I'm not gonna say they're better than the Windows ones, but they're usually more on top of it. They have different methodologies by which day control things. And a lot of the linux system are people managing clusters of service. So
they probably push an update. They watch crowds shake break because project does not have the best reputation in that, so they're locking down those controls really, really well. The results the same though, a bad update because it attaches to the colonel means the system stops functioning. Now, this 1 of things Dave did a great job of highlighting in there of any driver update from any company that hooks in. Your video card drivers or nvidia drivers for
games, all those updates. Those are kernel level updates as well. And when they have a bad update, the same thing happens, the colonel cannot function if it goes aw. Jeez. We were talking about the stock dropping, and I was immediately going into... Who's who was shorting it afford it happened. Did you... There's a Bloomberg our article out right now that there was a short sellers, there was a company sold off a billion dollar windfall from this that basically
it didn't tank. It's on Bloomberg, so it's behind a pay wall. But apparently, that set it into a a spiral. It drop, like, once it dropped, like, 23 percent. It's sent into a spiral, and now it's down 30, 40 percent. But if you look up crowds strike outage net short sellers is almost a billion dollar windfall. Yeah. People probably had some insight information, in the tech community, there's a lot of that. And when someone knows an updates going wrong they're like, you picture phone call if
you were at insider. Hey. I'll give you a tip. Give me a cut. Yeah. We're dealing without. Like somebody knew that was going on. And and the cascading of it, because once it went out, you know, the the horse left the barn. Right An all the system that getting me major real time updates. These aren't like the updates where we schedule them and like we used to. It's not like the Av where we schedule it on Tuesday at 07:00. These are When that update go push, it goes
right away. See, that was another thing I wanted to... Like, again, you always think about patch Tuesdays and, like, who rolled that That I was kind of my first... Like, again, I'm I'm, you know, I'm speaking like a sales guy, but, like, doesn't... Why would this happen on a Friday. You know what I mean? And, again, and know appreciate you explaining it to to idiots. But, just to wrap up the Bloomberg thing. It said 12000000000 this year has been bought on short short sales on Crowds strike.
Which I wanna be honest with you. I'm gonna put my flag in the ground. I would rather be where I'm at and poor than to bet on a company shitting the bed. I don't I think it's un sc, and I I can appreciate someone making a billion dollars over on it, but, like, at what cost. You know what I mean? There's gonna be a lot of people that are. Yeah. Losing their livelihood over this and you know, and all the people with travel that just
destroyed. It seems more or less it was just medical and airline, did any other industries get hammered by this? I don't I didn't see anything. Yes. There's there's quite a bit. It's kind of lost in a noise because when you have companies that are in the automotive space and stuff like that. You... The Setbacks aren't exactly the same. It disrupts their engineering departments. It disrupts other things. But those are, like,
oh, Engineers got a day off. The the car that's it's not released until 20 25 got 1 extra day added to its release or whatever. But obviously, highly direct impact is gonna be hospitals. If you can't get that surgery, you can't get your pills filled Right, you know, the labs can't do their job or airlines, that is where there's always the most obvious mess because when people are stuck somewhere, They take to social media. Yeah. The first thing you knew. I know I'm stuck in
Nashville you just said. Yeah. I know w Iv Tv went down. Probably some other Tv stations went down because of. Yeah. The City of Royal oak closed down because all of their systems were offline. So it affected municipalities news stations. The Las Vegas sphere. That was be That was photoshopped. With... That was photoshop. The blue screen death. You know, I was it all... It was all people like Randy going, oh, yeah. Day off and then, like, darn it. I have to... And then you tried to tell your
boss. My my I got... My there, like, here's the fix. Like darn it. I gotta work. No. The fix easy man. The news didn't go down. Like, what when W goes to, like, the news was still working? Like, what what did what went down? They couldn't do lower thirds. Is that what That?? They couldn't do transitions, lower thirds. I was reading some of it and I was like, this kinda files a lower Like they I see on the bottom michael scrolling breaking news. Randy to the thing. He couldn't get a day off.
So now what? I feel like it's like 1 of those things where where how society is and we're all this is an outrage porn, but it's close where, like, you know, the weekend happened, Monday. We're barely talking it Monday, like, we're talking about it because obviously, we're recording this podcast, but, like, would... We wouldn't be talking about it if this was just Monday. Yeah. There's...
The part that's been driving me nuts, and I almost went on Linkedin this morning, and I said no, I got work to do. And if I do this again, and I have another post that gets 300000 engagements I'm going to. I'm going to be distracted, and I won't get work done again. So I went and ignored it if I already know what I'll probably go dunk on tomorrow is all these people that coming out of the wood work to tell us why we can't have large interconnected systems that are
managed. We need a completely sell... I'm like, Do you work in the real world where many computers are? Because look, this is a problem. There is no way to scale we manage thousands of computers and manage the security of thousands of computers feel really like, do we need... You know, people even questioned, Do we need something like Crowds strike. I'm like, you need something. Microsoft does not exactly had
the best track record of security. Others, there's a reason these companies kinda have to exist because makers us kinda flop around. I mean, how last year or was it earlier this year? I can't keep track anymore. They lost their own signing key. They are on Cease shit list for all the problems they've had. So look, there's reason we have this tooling it's because Microsoft has not chose to put the best foot forward when it comes to security. So there's not that's not a 10 argument anymore.
Just like having all these remote management tools we have. It's the only way to do things at scale. You can't just have a system minute at every place. You can't have a system tries to physically manage all these systems rolling into them. We need these large scalable tools. I don't have a better way to do it Or at least don't I've seen come up with a better way to do it. Because it the world is worse with them. That means we need, like, 10 times as many It people to be more
manual and hands on. Right. We kinda have a shortage now. I don't think we're gonna 10 x It people to solve this problem. Is why these automation tools and the value of these companies goes up prior to their stock tanking. I wanna say they crossed a 90000000000 dollar market crowds strike. I mean, their market cap is pretty high. They're a big player in the game. Well, no no question. We're going back to paper Tom. That's all we're... That's all there is to it. We're
going back to the. You make a lot of... You make a lot of agree year do people have... Going back to the Chunk chunk at Hudson we're going back to the cash only no Atms. So... You can't do that credit card swipe anymore because a lot of cards aren't in Boston anymore, they're just printed. All they are. I yeah my my bank card is printed. You can't... That was That's this new market chunk. That's the best part of Christmas vacation, the chunk chunk part. I was like, yeah.
That wasn't that long ago. So what is next? Just saying, alright, kiss my escrow crowds strike I'm buying sentinel, or I'm not buying anything, and I'm gonna hope that they don't screw me over and when they do. I'm gonna buy something else Like, what what what, you know, what's recourse? Because everybody's sitting here in a boardroom right now going? Alright. What the hell are we doing? Just ride this through or, you know, So what I have heard is... And I
think this is probably the most. A lot of these as you know, you're gonna sell these deals on 1 to 3 year deals whenever you can get the deal. I think there's been a lot of leverage to renegotiate and get really big discounts. I have a feeling that their stock price is taken a hit now, but their long term revenues can take for. What do you do? What's the tool you're gonna give the sales rep to say, don't switch or what are you gonna do?
I'm a 3 agreement. You could fight the agreement in court and try to get in line or Give you 6 months free. Yeah. Give you a year free. And that's what your... That's what your tools in your salesperson because you're like, I can't tell you it's never gonna happen again. We didn't know what's gonna happen the first time. We you know, we have a re engineered thing so it won't happen again is what you're telling everybody. Hopefully it's true. But you're your only arsenal you have
is discounts, discounts, discounts. So you sign over it you're gonna give away a ton. They're gonna miss all their next quarter or a quarter after they're gonna miss all their revenue goals because they gave away so much product for free because You know, the reality is you wanna keep that client base. The plane in that Fortune 500 space is a lucrative just space to be and, it's it's... Like I said, it it affected the core companies, the biggest companies, not the average
companies. They don't play. They've been trying to make a play into the smaller, like, Ms p, managed services, small business space, but they're far from there. Like you mentioned 7 1. They've definitely got a much bigger foothold in there. Yeah. I'm just again, I I only fear that it's kinda like this
this news cycle it it's it's... We're so easily swayed and something's gonna happen and nobody's gonna care, and it's gonna just, like, the, you know, the world just kinda froze for for during your morning coffee and no 1 and, you know, this the... Is it... Should it be bigger deal than what I everybody's making Or, is is this the nothing burger that I fear that it already is? I think it's, you know, it was a... We dusted out of recovery plans all the system ins got a quick scare,
figure out how to recover. We will recover. We will have it back. It's not like a hack. Because the problem with the hack is you have to shut everything down and get forensics. And that is that is crazy, more much more work. This is just get these drivers out. They send a bad 1. Once the systems are back up and running, and they're validated I don't have to hire an Ir team. I don't have to I don't have to file on my Sec papers that I had a security incident or anything
like that. It's gonna be a lot... It's way easier to recover from. It's the news of the day, the meme of the day for sure on Friday, it was amazing the memes because I asked everyone to share theirs. It's part of the reason it went so general role. We... You know, we had a good laugh of it at all. But I'm sure something agreed just will happen. Microsoft will
get hacked again. Something stupid happen. I mean, if if you're into the, like, using Hyper v, for example, it was just in February or March this year that Microsoft had update that destroyed everybody's hyper v. And so, yeah. So I was like, Microsoft always got, hey, watch us, man We got the call makeup Ready to entertain you again. All I know
is and we get frustrated. Shout out to all the Sis admins who get to give the proverbial middle finger to their executive teams that think that their jobs meaningless And that that that brought all the systems back up and said, I am justified my life here whether you think so or not mister Cfo. So shout out all. All the guys doing the hard work in the middle of the night. Hey, I I do... There was some fun posts on reddit Sis admin. 1 of them of those... I think more
than 1 of them like this where... Yeah. I used to work for this company and on my phones blowing up. They decided to outsource everything. They have no on prem people. They outsource it overseas and told us we weren't need anymore. Now that on... Their overseas people can't get into the systems because they won't boot. And they're calling us to come in and I'm like, no. Maybe. But there's a price... You gotta prep me some large just have
stacks a hundred dollar meals for me. I wouldn't and a whole letter of about how I told you so while I'm doing. I think they're undercut. Like, that's that's 1 of those things we're, like, if that's not 5 figures just I'm not answering your call. Like, don't... It's not even double or triple my rate. Like, no. No. Like, no. If you're gonna... If you if you... Because you probably saved millions by meet... Doing the move you made. Yep. So Yeah. Yeah. You want... I wanna fix, like, pay pay.
Yeah. So those are fun to read at least. So any part... I'm gonna... I'm gonna cut you loose time. Anything else that I that I missed or any dumb questions I didn't ask. But you wanna... No. No. I think we got it. Like I said, we'll will we make a means about some other egregious stupid thing that happened intact by next week. I'm sure. Absolutely. Tom, always good senior you man, Tom Lawrence.
You can find him on Linkedin. He's probably you top 5 viral people this yeah, Your post is, like, I look twice and I'm like, oh my god. It's Bananas, how much a traction is a little thing. I could tell because they were my stupid comment was getting traction. I'm like, wait a minute. My comments getting traction. But, hey, How bear with me. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. But, yeah, we'll see you soon, man a lot. It's been too long, and, hopefully, we'll we'll catch up soon.
Connect have lunch and meal it's the next it... It's been a minute. I gotta make it out. Look forward to it. And, we're gonna wrap things up for this episode of It on behalf of Bob and Randy. Do a all of favor. Drink up be drinks, get your phone numbers. You don't gotta go home. You just gotta get the hell out of here. Being it.