Windows Update Causes Global IT Outage

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Facts

• A glitch with Microsoft Windows on Friday reportedly hit global businesses and institutions, disrupting critical services — including airlines, banks, and stock exchanges — across the world.¹
• The massive Information Technology (IT) outage canceled over 2.5K US flights, affected operations at London's Stock Exchange, knocked Sky News off the air, and impacted Europe's medical facilities.²
• Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said that the outage had been caused by 'a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts,' adding it was neither a security incident nor a cyberattack.³
• CrowdStrike's Chief Executive Officer George Kurtz said that the underlying issue — caused by an update to CrowdStrike's 'Falcon Sensor' — has been isolated, and a fix has been deployed.⁴
• Impacts also included local television news not airing in the US as well as the cancelation of non-urgent surgeries.⁵
• In its last earnings report, CrowdStrike said it had nearly 24K customers, indicating the number of individual endpoints could be enormous.⁶

Sources: ¹Guardian, ²USA Today, ³Crowdstrike.Com, ⁴NDTV.com, ⁵Associated Press and ⁶BBC News.

Narratives

• Narrative A, as provided by SolicitorsJournal. This is the biggest technology failure ever, highlighting the risk of having numerous essential service providers reliant on a single piece of software. It's also a reminder of the importance of critical infrastructure resilience. Only businesses and institutions that develop robust systems and contingency plans and switch to an alternate system will effectively avoid the catastrophic consequences of such disruptions in the future.
• Narrative B, as provided by Newsweek. This outage isn't unique — such incidents have occurred in the past and will likely happen again. Software updates and bug fixes are crucial to prevent all types of cyber incidents and ensure that systems run smoothly and efficiently. CrowdStrike is actively working with impacted customers, and there's a workaround. Users' systems will get back up and running again.

Predictions