A widespread technology outage grounded flights, knocked banks offline, and crashed media outlets off air on Friday, July 19th, in a massive disruption that affected companies and services around the world and highlighted dependence on software from a handful of providers.
Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said that the issue believed to be behind the outage was not a security incident or cyberattack.
Boston’s Mass General Brigham canceling all nonurgent care appointments and visits
The Boston-based health system Mass General Brigham said on its website that it was canceling all nonurgent care visits because of the outage, but its emergency rooms remain open.
The company said on its website that it can’t gain access to its clinical systems, including patient health records and scheduling.
It asked patients not to call to reschedule and said a care team member would reach out to them instead.
More than 1,500 US flights canceled by late morning, FlightAware says
By nine in the morning on the East Coast of the United States, about 1,500 U.S. flights had been canceled and nearly 4,000 delayed — numbers that were sure to grow throughout the day — according to FlightAware.
Delta canceled nearly 500 flights, American canceled 300, and United more than 200, and those numbers don’t include flights on their regional affiliates.
CrowdStrike CEO says sorry for the impact of outage
CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity vendor that develops software to help companies detect and block hacks. It is used by many of the world’s Fortune 500 companies, including major global banks, healthcare and energy companies.
“We’re deeply sorry for the impact that we’ve caused to customers, to travelers, to anyone affected by this, including our companies,” CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said on NBC’s “Today Show” Friday. “We know what the issue is” and are working to remediate it.
He said the system was sent an update and the update had a bug in it causing a problem with Microsoft’s Windows operating system.
“It was only the Microsoft operating system” that was affected, though it didn’t happen on every Microsoft Windows system, he said.
CrowdStrike is the pioneer of cloud-delivered endpoint protection. CrowdStrike Falcon® has revolutionized endpoint security by being the first and only solution to unify next-generation antivirus, endpoint detection and response (EDR), and a 24/7 threat-hunting service — all delivered via a single lightweight agent.
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