A fault with an update issued by cybersecurity company CrowdStrike led to a cascading effect among global IT systems Friday, with industries ranging from banking to airlines facing outages.
Banks and health care providers saw their services disrupted and television broadcasters went offline as businesses worldwide grappled with the ongoing outage. Air travel has been hit hard, too, with planes grounded and services delayed.
At the heart of the issue is the Texas-based cybersecurity vendor CrowdStrike. On Friday, the cybersecurity firm experienced a major disruption following an issue with a software update.
So what happened, exactly? CNBC takes a look.
What is CrowdStrike and what does it do?
CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity vendor that develops software to help companies detect and block hacks. It is used by many of the world’s Fortune 500 companies, including major global banks, health care and energy companies.
CrowdStrike is what’s known as an “endpoint security” firm as it uses cloud technology to apply cyber protections to devices that are connected to the internet.
This differs from alternative approaches used by other cyber firms, which involve applying protection directly to backend server systems.
What happened Friday?
On Friday, people around the world began encountering an error screen known as the “blue screen of death.”
This issue — a common problem among PCs, for example if a machine overheats — was the result of an update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike concerning its Falcon product.
Falcon is a platform developed by the company that’s designed to stop cyber breaches using cloud technology — it is at the heart of the firm’s focus on endpoints. CrowdStrike said Friday it is in the process of rolling back the update globally.
CrowdStrike’s software requires deep access to a computer’s operating system to scan for threats. In the case of Friday’s outage, machines running Microsoft’s Windows operating system crashed due…
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