Global IT Meltdown: Businesses Slowly Recovering From Microsoft Outage After Crowdstrike Update; Full Recovery Expected To Take Time

Businesses and services around the globe are slowly recovery following a massive IT outage that affected computer systems worldwide on Friday (19 July).

However, achieving full recovery from this major crash will require some time.

A large number of airlines, banks, television channels, and financial institutions globally were thrown into disarray for several hours by one of the largest IT crashes seen in recent times.

The IT outage was caused by an antivirus program update.

The outages mainly affected users of CrowdStrike on the Microsoft Windows platform. The update caused the incompatible software to crash computers, leading to the "Blue Screen of Death."

In India, several airports issued handwritten boarding passes to passengers, with many IndiGo flights in Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Hyderabad being cancelled and rescheduled.

Airlines have since reported a gradual resumption of departures and arrivals, but delays are still expected.

Media companies were also hit hard. Sky News in Britain had to halt its morning news broadcasts due to the glitch, while Australia's ABC reported major difficulties.

CrowdStrike has rolled out a fix for the issue, with CEO George Kurtz confirming that his teams are "fully mobilised" to help affected clients. Kurtz, however, said that it could take "some time" before all systems are fully operational again.

The worldwide impact of the software failure has prompted questions on the dependence on a single provider for multiple services.

According to security experts, CrowdStrike's routine update, which led to the global crashes, apparently lacked adequate quality checks before being deployed.

Microsoft has since confirmed that the root cause has been fixed and all affected services have been restored.

CrowdStrike, which once reached a market capitalisation of about $83 billion, is a leading cybersecurity provider with nearly 30,000 subscribers worldwide.

More than half of Fortune 500 companies and various government bodies, including the top US cybersecurity agency, use CrowdStrike's software.

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