
One day after a global IT failure impacted major industries worldwide, including broadcasters, corporations, and airports, companies are trying to pick up the pieces.
A sensor configuration update to CrowdStrike’s Falcon platform, which was made available on Friday, “triggered a logic error,” according to the cybersecurity company, resulting in “a system crash and blue screen (BSOD) on impacted systems.” The company reported that the problem was soon fixed.
However, what happened next was a severe information technology malfunction that affected airplanes, hospitals, companies, and law enforcement agencies worldwide, causing Microsoft PCs to display “Blue Screens of Death.”
The outage affected 8.5 million Microsoft devices, according to a statement made by David Weston, Microsoft’s vice president of enterprise and operating system security, on the company blog on Saturday morning.
“As of right now, we calculate that 8.5 million Windows devices—less than 1% of all Windows computers—were impacted by CrowdStrike’s update,” he stated. “Even if the percentage was low, the usage of CrowdStrike by businesses that provide numerous essential services has a large influence on the economy and society.”
Major US airlines halted their aircraft, causing delays throughout the world. According to flight tracking website FlightAware, more than 2,500 flights to, from, and within the United States were canceled as of Saturday morning.
There are still long lineups of exhausted travelers at airports all across the world, including those in Atlanta, Salt Lake City, and Bali.
After first reporting that all of Alaska’s 911 services were unavailable, troopers clarified that everything was back to normal. Plano, Texas, and New Hampshire were two other states and localities that reported 911 issues as a result of the outage, but they later declared that services were operating as usual.
The healthcare corporation said that 51 hospitals in Western states that are part of Providence Southern California were among the medical facilities impacted by the outage.
Surgery and medical appointments had to be canceled at a number of significant American hospitals. The 73-year-old man’s daughter reported that the procedure to remove eight blockages and repair an aneurysm at Baptist Health Hospital in Paducah, Kentucky, on Friday was canceled because of the worldwide technology outage.
The Associated Press reports that the outage on Friday also caused operational disruptions for courts in Massachusetts and New York.
Bank customers were also impacted by the problem, which prevented them from accessing their money. Individuals from major retail banks in Australia, New Zealand, and other countries reported having trouble accessing their accounts. The largest stock exchange in Europe, the London Stock Exchange, reported that while trade had not been hampered, several of its services had been interrupted.
Starbucks reported on Saturday morning that they were back up and running after experiencing problems with its mobile order-ahead and pay functions.
Sen. Eric Schmitt, a Republican from Missouri, requested a briefing on the IT problem by July 26 from the Defense Department’s acting chief information officer.
According to a representative for the Defense Department, staff members were keeping an eye on their networks for any potential effects and were aware of the problems.
“For operational security purposes, we don’t discuss the state of our information systems, network, or activities to evaluate cyberthreats,” the statement said.