Microsoft, CrowdStrike both deploy fixes to resolve the global outage

A massive IT outage was disrupting operations at companies across multiple industries on Friday, with major airlines halting flights, some broadcasters off-air

Microsoft has said that the underlying cause behind the disruption in the Azure cloud service has been fixed, adding the issue with the Windows 365 personal computers was caused by a recent update to the CrowdStrike software.

CrowdStrike Holdings' chief executive officer too has posted on social media platform X that the company has identified the update which led to a worldwide crash in the Windows systems and that 'a fix has been deployed'.

“This is not a security incident or cyberattack,” CEO George Kurtz added.

CrowdStrike's Falcon Sensor threat-monitoring software was the cause which led to Microsoft’s Windows operating system to crash. The disruption that resulted in Microsoft’s Azure cloud services triggered a worldwide IT outage that disrupted several businesses globally.

IT security tools are meant to ensure that they operate in the worst-case scenario. "To be the root cause of a global IT outage is an unmitigated disaster", Ajay Unni, CEO of StickmanCyber, a cybersecurity company told Reuters. Shares of CrowdStrike were down close to 20 percent during pre-market trade on Wall Street this Friday. Shares of Microsoft too were under pressure during pre-market trade in US.

Microsoft Azure confirmed that it has received reports of successful recovery from some customers attempting multiple virtual restart operations, however some 'residual impact' of outages are continuing to affect some Office 365 services.

More than half of the Fortune 500 companies used CrowdStrike software, according to a promotional video by the company.

Earlier today, IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw too posted on social media platform X that the cyber protection agency CERT-In has released a technical advisory to resolve the issue, which disrupted several airlines' operations and some stock broking services offered by private players.

The global scale of the outage has prompted some experts to seek more resilient networks and have questioned reliance on a single service provider.

"This is a a very, very uncomfortable illustration of the fragility of the world’s core Internet infrastructure," Ciaran Martin, Professor at Oxford University's Blavatnik School of Government and former head of the UK National Cyber Security Centre told Reuters.

On July 19, the shares of CrowdStrike slipped 15 percent at open on Nasdaq. At 19:15, the stock was trading 11.59 percent lower at $303.29.