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Largest IT Outage in History Affecting Banks, Airlines, and Businesses Worldwide

by Emmitt Barry, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) — A widespread global IT outage impacted cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike, affecting operations across banks, airlines, media companies, and emergency services worldwide. The incident shut down computer systems and highlighted the vulnerability and interdependence of global digital infrastructure.

The IT outage caused widespread global disruptions, affecting a variety of services including banks, 911 emergency call centers in the U.S., the London Stock Exchange’s news service, Britain’s National Health Service, and airlines around the world that had to cancel flights, leading to significant impacts on businesses globally.

Bloomberg reported that CrowdStrike alerted its customers that its Falcon Sensor threat-monitoring product was responsible for the disruptions, leading to crashes in Microsoft’s Windows operating system. The cause of the issue was not disclosed. Additionally, there were reports of disturbances in Microsoft’s Azure cloud services and Office 365 software.

Windows computers and tablets experienced crashes across various countries including the U.S., China, and Australia, with social media reports indicating forced device restarts. Many of the impacted machines failed to reboot, displaying what is commonly referred to as the “blue screen of death.”

Microsoft stated, “We’re aware of an issue affecting Windows devices due to an update from a third-party software platform,” and added, “We anticipate a resolution is forthcoming.”

In a post on X, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz announced that the issue had been identified and a fix was implemented, emphasizing that “this is not a security incident or cyberattack.”

The incident highlighted concerns among IT experts that a single update from one company could disrupt numerous computer systems globally—from airline check-in desks to international financial systems—ushering them into a digital dark age. This serves as a stark reminder of the economy’s heavy reliance on technology and the risks associated with excessive consolidation around the same tools.

Alan Woodward, a cybersecurity professor at Surrey University, described the global outage as “unprecedented” to Bloomberg and cautioned that “the economic impact will be huge.”

Troy Hunt, an Australian web security consultant, commented on X, “I don’t think it’s too early to call it: this will be the largest IT outage in history.”