What is Crowdstrike? What to know about company linked to tech outage
A global tech outage disrupted major airlines, media companies, banks, and telecommunications firms worldwide on Friday morning. Australia's government stated that the outage seemed to be connected to an issue at the cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike, which is utilized by over half of Fortune 500 companies according to the U.S. firm.
Although most airlines managed to resume operations gradually, disruptions were expected to persist throughout the day. Various airports and airlines advised customers to arrive earlier than usual for their flights. The outage was believed to be linked to a glitch in Microsoft software used globally.
Details of the Outage
According to an alert from Crowdstrike to its clients, the company's "Falcon Sensor" software caused Microsoft Windows to crash, resulting in the display of a blue screen, commonly known as the "Blue Screen of Death." The alert, issued at 1:30 a.m. ET on Friday, included a manual workaround for the issue. Crowdstrike did not respond to requests for comments.
Established in 2012, Crowdstrike boasts the "world's most advanced cloud-native platform that protects and enables the people, processes, and technologies driving modern enterprise" according to its website.
Impact of the Outage
Air passengers worldwide experienced delays, cancellations, and check-in problems due to the tech outage affecting airports and airlines. Several U.S. carriers issued ground stops for all flights early on Friday because of communication issues. Over 2,000 flights were canceled with more than 6,100 delays reported as of 1 p.m. ET.
Multiple sectors worldwide were impacted by the tech outage on Friday, ranging from British broadcaster Sky News going off-air to train delays in the U.K. and disruptions at London's Stock Exchange. Hospitals faced challenges in processing appointments, retail stores reported payment issues, and Manchester United had to postpone a ticket release.
In Australia, media, banks, and telecom companies were also affected by the outages. The office of Australia's National Cyber Security Coordinator, Michelle McGuinness, stated that there was no indication of the outage being a cybersecurity incident.
How to Install Falcon in the Datacenter
For those interested in installing Falcon in the datacenter, you can refer to the installation guide provided by CrowdStrike.
New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority reported some offline systems due to the global technical outage, although train and bus services remained unaffected.
