Global IT Outage Spurs Slow Recovery After Faulty CrowdStrike Update
Businesses and services worldwide are gradually recovering from a massive technology outage that disrupted operations globally and raised concerns about the vulnerabilities in the interconnected economy.
A faulty software update caused the unprecedented outage on Friday, grounding flights, crippling financial companies and news outlets, and affecting hospitals, supermarkets, small businesses, and government offices.
By Saturday, several services were back online, but George Kurtz, CEO of U.S. cybersecurity company CrowdStrike—whose botched software update on its Falcon Sensor affected Microsoft's Windows operating system—warned that complete recovery might take weeks.
CrowdStrike announced that it had rolled out a fix for the issue. Kurtz, speaking to CNBC, issued a personal apology to all organizations, groups, and individuals impacted by the widespread glitch.
The White House stated that President Joe Biden's team was in communication with CrowdStrike and affected parties, ready to provide assistance as needed.
"Our understanding is that flight operations have resumed across the country, although some congestion remains," a senior U.S. administration official said.
Junade Ali from Britain's Institution of Engineering and Technology described the scale of the outage as unprecedented, noting that it would go down in history. He compared it to a similar incident in 2017.
In Europe, major airports, including Berlin's, which had suspended all flights earlier on Friday, reported that departures and arrivals were gradually resuming. Nonetheless, dozens of European flights were canceled. Turkish Airlines pulled 84 flights, while Italian officials confirmed about 80 departures had been canceled.
Across Latin America, airports advised passengers to arrive hours earlier than usual for their flights. Chinese state media reported that Beijing's airports were not affected.
Companies were left to patch up their systems and assess the damage, even as officials sought to calm fears by ruling out foul play.
The disruption exposed vulnerabilities in the economy and highlighted the volatility of the markets, according to Al Jazeera's Kristen Saloomey, reporting from New York. She added that while systems were being restored, it might take longer to address the consequences for ordinary people.
Experts suggested that the incident should prompt a reevaluation of society's reliance on a few technology companies for a broad range of services.
"We need to be aware that such software can be a common cause of failure for multiple systems simultaneously," said Professor John McDermid from Britain's York University, an expert in cybersecurity and software engineering. He emphasized the need for infrastructure to be resilient against such common-cause problems.
While Friday's events were damaging for CrowdStrike, one analyst did not foresee competitors taking significant market share as a result.
"This is clearly a major black eye for CrowdStrike, and the stock will be under pressure," said Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities. He told Reuters that the incident resulted from a technical update, not a hack or cybersecurity threat, which he said would be more concerning.
CrowdStrike's stock fell more than 11 percent on Friday, according to Reuters. The company, which previously reached a market cap of about $83 billion, is among the most popular cybersecurity providers in the world, with close to 30,000 subscribers globally.
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