The recent Microsoft-CrowdStrike outage has exposed a critical weakness in America’s IT infrastructure. This incident caused over $5.4 billion in damages and disrupted essential services nationwide and revealed Microsoft’s dominant force in productivity software, cloud services and even security technology for the U.S. government.
Microsoft has a staggering 85% market share in government IT software. This overreliance creates a significant cybersecurity risk. Our new polling with Echelon Insights shows that Americans share our concerns. 62% of voters are more worried about Microsoft’s dominance after the outage, and 65% believe the government must change its approach to IT procurement.
In this letter, Amy Bos, NetChoice Director of State and Federal Affairs, urges the GSA to act swiftly and “address the implications of single points of failure in America’s critical IT infrastructure.” The next major security incident isn’t a matter of if, but when.
Image generated by NetChoice using ChatGPT’s DALL-E.