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The Future. On Friday, an overnight update from top cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike caused a global network outage that affected Microsoft Windows users in the transportation, finance, government, and healthcare industries. While the issue has already been identified, and the update retracted, some organizations may consider switching over wholesale to Apple’s iOS.
Crash course
What’s being considered the largest IT outage in history could have ramifications that last for weeks, or even months.
But here’s what happened just over the weekend.
- CrowdStrike sent a late Thursday night update to its software that contained corrupted code… and all hell broke loose when it crashed systems using a Windows operating system.
- That led to a “Blue Screen of Death” that locked users out of their systems — a glitch that requires computers to be fixed manually (a process that could take days or longer).
- But the damage was immediate — thousands of flights were grounded, government functions were suspended, TV networks went dark, banks couldn’t process transactions, and hospitals had to postpone surgeries.
Once the issue is fixed, that’ll likely just be the start of an avalanche of Congressional hearings, security reviews, and financial fallout that could remake the cybersecurity landscape.
It’s possible that this incident was simply a canary in a coal mine — today, it was a buggy update; tomorrow, it could be an actual hack from a malicious actor.
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