Global tech outage disrupts industries, highlights risks of interconnected world
Technology
Global tech outage disrupts industries, highlights risks of interconnected world
(Reuters) - A global tech outage on Friday crippled industries from travel to finance before services started coming back online after hours of disruption, highlighting the risks of a global shift toward digital, interconnected technologies.
A software update by global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike (CRWD.O), opens new tab triggered systems problems that grounded flights, opens new tab, forced broadcasters off air and left customers without access to services such as healthcare or banking.
Accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, governments and businesses have become increasingly dependent on a handful of interconnected technology companies over the past two decades, which explains why one software issue rippled far and wide.
The outage shone a spotlight on CrowdStrike, an $83 billion company that is not a household name, but has more than 20,000 subscribers around the world including tech giants like Amazon.com (AMZN.O), opens new tab and Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab. Crowdstrike CEO George Kurtz said on social media platform X that a defect was found "in a single content update for Windows hosts" that affected Microsoft customers.
"We're deeply sorry for the impact that we've caused to customers, to travellers, to anyone affected by this, including our company," Kurtz told NBC News' "Today" program.
"Many of the customers are rebooting the system and it's coming up and it'll be operational."
Microsoft's chief communications officer, Frank Shaw, said on X that the company was supporting customers as they recover their systems after the CrowdStrike update brought down "a number of Windows systems globally."
