The CEO of cybersecurity company CrowdStrike George Kurtz blamed a defective update for causing a widespread outage which led to chaos across a range of businesses using Microsoft applications.
In a statement on social media platform X, Kurtz said his company was “actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts”, adding “this is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed”.
The statement followed widespread reports of issues with Microsoft applications across the globe which numerous media outlets including The Guardian linked to CrowdStrike.
Problems with Microsoft applications had been blamed for causing chaos at airports, taking broadcasters off-air and business disruption.
Some affected companies blamed global IT problems rather than fingering Microsoft directly: regardless, the impact was broad, with airports in the UK, Netherlands and US among those affected.
This is not a security incident or cyberattack
George Kurtz – CEO CrowdStrike
Various media outlets including Sky News in the UK were unable to broadcast live, while organisations from banks to healthcare providers reported problems on social media. Some retailers were unable to accept card payments.
The tech giant first reported issues with users accessing apps and services on its Microsoft 365 help page at 11pm BST yesterday (18 July) and posted numerous updates in the following hours stating the situation was being resolved.
At 9.30am BST today it claimed it was “continuing to see an improvement in service availability across multiple Microsoft 365 apps and services”.
“We’re closely monitoring our telemetry data to ensure this upward trend continues as our mitigation actions continue to progress”.
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