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Worldwide Internet Outage
A Crowdstrike office is shown in Sunnyvale, Calif., on Friday, July 19, 2024. An overnight outage was blamed on a software update that cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike sent to Microsoft computers of its corporate customers including many airlines. (AP Photo/Haven Daley)

Risk-averse organizations chose CrowdStrike for cybersecurity. Now its software is causing chaos

Airlines, banks, hospitals and other risk-averse organizations around the world chose cybersecurity company CrowdStrike to protect their computer systems from hackers and data breaches

By MATT O'BRIEN
Published - Jul 19, 2024, 04:03 PM ET
Last Updated - Jul 19, 2024, 04:03 PM EDT

Airlines, banks, hospitals and other risk-averse organizations around the world chose cybersecurity company CrowdStrike to protect their computer systems from hackers and data breaches.

But all it took was one faulty CrowdStrike software update to cause global disruptions Friday that grounded flights, knocked banks and media outlets offline, and disrupted hospitals, retailers and other services.

“This is a function of the very homogenous technology that goes into the backbone of all of our IT infrastructure,” said Gregory Falco, an assistant professor of engineering at Cornell University. “What really causes this mess is that we rely on very few companies, and everybody uses the same folks, so everyone goes down at the same time.”

The trouble with the update issued by CrowdStrike and affecting computers running Microsoft's Windows operating system was not a hacking incident or cyberattack, according to CrowdStrike, which apologized and said a fix was on the way.

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