CrowdStrike-related outage affected 8.5 million Windows devices: World

Air passengers worldwide faced delays, flight cancellations and headaches checking in as airports and airlines were caught up in the IT outage that affected numerous industries ranging from banks to media companies

A global tech outage that was related to a software update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike affected nearly 8.5 million Microsoft devices, Microsoft said in a blog on Saturday. Across the world Friday, affected computers were showing the blue screen of death a sign that something went wrong with Microsoft's Windows operating system.

”We currently estimate that CrowdStrike’s update affected 8.5 million Windows devices, or less than one percent of all Windows machines,” it said in the blog.

CrowdStrike has helped develop a scalable solution that will help Microsoft’s Azure infrastructure accelerate a fix, Microsoft said, adding that the tech giant had worked with both Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform to collaborate on the ”most effective approaches.”

Microsoft said in a statement that this incident demonstrates the interconnected nature of our broad ecosystem — global cloud providers, software platforms, security vendors and other software vendors, and customers.

"It’s also a reminder of how important it is for all of us across the tech ecosystem to prioritize operating with safe deployment and disaster recovery using the mechanisms that exist. As we’ve seen over the last two days, we learn, recover and move forward most effectively when we collaborate and work together. We appreciate the cooperation and collaboration of our entire sector, and we will continue to update with learnings and next steps.," the statement further added.

"While software updates may occasionally cause disturbances, significant incidents like the CrowdStrike event are infrequent. We currently estimate that CrowdStrike’s update affected 8.5 million Windows devices, or less than one percent of all Windows machines. While the percentage was small, the broad economic and societal impacts reflect the use of CrowdStrike by enterprises that run many critical services," the blogpost from Microsoft added.

*With Agency Inputs