CrowdStrike outage: Firms rush to restore business

Companies and other organizations were dealing with a backlog of orders, canceled appointments and delayed travel plans on Saturday, a day after a technology crash disrupted computer systems globally for several hours.

Tens of millions of people from Brazil to Japan were hit by Friday's massive outage affecting devices running Microsoft Windows, which caused thousands of flights to be canceled, bank services to go offline and several TV channels to fall silent. 

CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm that caused the outage, blamed the roll-out of a fix for a problem with its software. CEO George Kurtz told the US news channel CNBC he wanted to "personally apologize to every organization, every group and every person who has been impacted."

What's the latest?

Disruptions were expected to continue into the weekend as firms struggled to update their IT systems, technology experts said.

CrowdStrike warned that it could take some time for all of its clients to install the fix and restart their entire computer networks.

So far, more than 5,000 flights have been canceled as a result of the outage, out of more than 110,000 scheduled commercial flights, aviation analytics company Cirium said

Additional flight delays can be expected, particularly on those airlines affected by the outage, as they restore services, airlines said.

In Europe, major airports, including in Berlin, which had suspended all flights on Friday morning, said departures and arrivals were gradually resuming by the evening.

Spanish airport operator Aena, which earlier reported a computer systems incident, said its IT was up and running again in the afternoon.

Across Latin America, airports were asking passengers to arrive for flights hours earlier than usual. 

Reports from the United States, the Netherlands and Britain suggested health services were affected by the outage and backlogs of appointments and medicines were to be expected, health associations said.

How the outage affected millions

Microsoft said the issue began on Thursday and started affecting Windows users running the CrowdStrike Falcon cybersecurity tool. 

Businesses and governments worldwide experienced hourslong disruptions and affected computer after computer started showing the "blue screen of death" error message.

Air travel was immediately hit and from Amsterdam to Zurich, Singapore to Hong Kong, airport operators flagged technical issues that were disrupting their services. While some airports halted all flights, in others airline staff had to check-in passengers manually. Long lines formed at airports across Asia, the US and Europe.

Banks, hospitals and financial services companies warned customers of disruptions and traders across markets spoke of problems executing transactions. Several TV channels were taken off the air, including Britain's Sky News and Australia's ABC.

Companies were left patching up their systems and trying to assess the damage, even as officials tried to tamp down panic by ruling out foul play.

Within hours of the outage, CrowdStrike said the outage was not a security incident or cyberattack. CEO Kurtz said in a statement his teams were "fully mobilized" to help affected customers and "a fix has been deployed."

Experts stress that Friday's disruptions were a reminder that deploying software from only a handful of providers can leave global IT systems vulnerable.

Scores of companies rely on CrowdStrike for their security needs.

mm/sms (AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters)