Whew! Tech employees likely woke up to their worst nightmare on Friday (July 19). A software update initiated by CrowdStrike caused a global tech outage for Microsoft programs overnight.
The outage led to thousands of canceled flights and disrupted operations at banks, hospitals, and media, according to the media.
Meanwhile, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz and Microsoft have already stated that the global outage in separate statements. Keep scrolling for the latest updates on the IT failure.
For context, CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity company that Microsoft employs. In an emailed statement to AP, Microsoft spokesperson Frank Shaw blamed the global outage on an update glitch.
Shaw reportedly wrote, “a CrowdStrike update was responsible for bringing down a number of Windows systems globally.”
Meanwhile, CrowdStrike’s George Kurtz spoke on the ‘Today’ show on Friday morning about the global tech outage. He apologized for the outage, saying CrowdStrike is “deeply sorry for the impact that we’ve caused to customers, to travelers, to anyone affected by this, additionally our companies.”
“It could be some time for some systems that won’t recover,” Kurtz said. “It is our mission…that every customer is recovered and we’re not going to relent until we get every customer back to where they were and we continue to protect them, and keep bad guys out of their systems.”
CEO Kurtz mentioned that the outage only affected the Microsoft operating system across the global. But, not every Microsoft Windows system experienced it.