Crowdstrike Blames Bug for Global Tech Outage: New Measures Unveiled

Crowdstrike reported a bug in an update causing a global tech outage that affected millions of computers, grounding flights, and disrupting numerous sectors. The company outlined measures to avoid future issues, including staggered updates and enhanced internal testing. A full incident review will be released upon completion.

Crowdstrike is attributing last week's global tech outage to a bug in an update that led its cybersecurity systems to disseminate faulty data to millions of customer computers. This disruption affected flights, TV broadcasts, banks, hospitals, and retailers.

In response, Crowdstrike has proposed several preventative measures, such as staggering updates, allowing customers more control over update timing, and providing detailed update information. The company has also enhanced internal testing and implemented new checks to stop problematic content from being deployed again.

Preliminary post-incident review details were shared online by Crowdstrike on Wednesday. The undetected error in the content configuration update for the Falcon platform specifically affected Windows machines. Approximately 8.5 million computers crashed on Friday, but many are now back in operation as the company and regulators await a comprehensive analysis.

(With inputs from agencies.)