A failed update could be behind the issue.
Companies, airlines, financial service providers, and media groups worldwide are experiencing global system failures – reported the Hungarian Nation.
The problem affects almost every sector, with significant disruptions at European, American, and Asian airports. According to Cirium, an aviation analytics company, over a thousand flights have been canceled globally today, and this number will only grow as the ripple effects increase.
In addition, banking services are experiencing disruptions worldwide. Several countries’ healthcare systems are also suffering from IT issues, as two hospitals in Lübeck and Kiel, North Germany, have canceled non-life-saving surgeries planned for Friday. In the United Kingdom, disruptions were also experienced in pharmacy services.
The Swiss Federal Cybersecurity Agency told Reuters that the cause of the problem is a faulty update or misconfiguration by the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike.
CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity company founded in 2011 with the goal of protecting the world’s largest companies and hardware from cyber threats and vulnerabilities.
According to CrowdStrike, the global IT problems were caused by a mistake in the “content update.” “CrowdStrike is actively working with customers affected by the issue found in the content updates of Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not affected.
This is not a security incident or a cyberattack.
We have identified, isolated, and fixed the problem – the company wrote.
