Last Friday, July 19, 2024, the ripple effect of one of history’s most widespread tech outages was extremely felt as it brought a substantial portion of the world to an abrupt halt, caused by just one faulty software update by CrowdStrike, one of the major cyber security firms in the world. The faulty update caused a lot of computers to show blue error screens and then stop working. This global system disruption has affected almost all major industries, amongst these are the airline and travel industry, government services, banking institutions, healthcare services as well as the media and TV industry.  

CrowdStrike admitted their error, apologized, and provided a solution on Friday. However, they have not explained how a harmful update was able to slip through testing and other security measures. George Kurtz, President & CEO of CrowdStrike, immediately issued an official statement in X (formerly Twitter), “CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted.” He further added, “This is not a security incident or cyberattack,” emphasizing that the outage was not due to malicious intent. Furthermore, he stated that, “The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed. We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website. We further recommend organizations ensure they’re communicating with CrowdStrike representatives through official channels. Our team is fully mobilized to ensure the security and stability of CrowdStrike customers.” 

On July 20, 2024, Kurtz posted in X, a follow-up statement, “As CrowdStrike continues to work with customers and partners to resolve this incident, our team has written a technical overview of today’s events. We will continue to update our findings as the investigation progresses.” He also emphasized the company’s dedication to offering complete transparency regarding the occurrence of this incident, stating, “As this incident is resolved, you have my commitment to provide full transparency on how this occurred and the steps we’re taking to prevent anything like this from happening again.” 

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