A defective update from U.S. cybersecurity software company CrowdStrike crashed Microsoft Windows systems around the globe Friday. The tech outage disrupted operations across industries such as banks, hospitals and 911 call centers, plus grounded flights and hampered public transit systems and. Although a fix was deployed to restore most systems by the afternoon to return to normal, ripple effects may be felt throughout the weekend, experts warn.
CrowdStrike, which advertises being used by over half of Fortune 500 companies, said one of its recent content updates had a defect that impacted Microsoft’s Windows Operating System, adding the incident was “not a security incident or cyberattack.”
“Earlier today, a CrowdStrike update was responsible for bringing down a number of IT systems globally,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement on Friday afternoon. “We are actively supporting customers to assist in their recovery.”
The company’s CEO, George Kurtz, apologized for the disruptions in a post on X, noting the issue has been identified and isolated and a fix has been deployed. CrowdStrike is “working with all impacted customers to ensure that systems are back up and they can deliver the services their customers are counting on.” Meanwhile, Microsoft said, “the underlying cause has been fixed” and impacted Microsoft 365 apps and services have been recovered, though the company continues to monitor the issue.
Kurtz went on to warn in his statement, “We know that…
