If you are having trouble with customer service, ATMs, or airports this morning, CrowdStrike, a leading cloud service provider, says a fix is on the way. A global IT disruption overnight brought groups that use Microsoft Windows to a standstill.
CrowdStrike experienced a widespread data outage on Thursday, affecting thousands of its clients globally. Among them, media, transportation, healthcare, and government facilities across North Carolina. Currently, North Carolina DMV offices are closed due to the outage, and flight delays are plaguing airports nationwide.
“NC Ports’ systems are experiencing issues due to the global IT outages,” read an email sent out by the NC State Ports Authority Friday. “We anticipate some delays servicing trucks this morning but our team is actively bringing systems back online. We are monitoring this situation closely and will continue to send out alerts and update our customers as systems are restored.”
The outage is already being called the biggest ‘cyber incident” ever, in terms of global impact.
CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed. We…
— George Kurtz (@George_Kurtz) July 19, 2024
The disruption began early Friday morning causing significant interruptions for airports, hospitals, e-commerce, and other groups that use CrowdStrike’s storage and database management services. Among the groups impacted are Raleigh Durham International Airport, The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, the Paris Olympics, and 911 systems in some midwest states.
Windows users came into work to see the “blue screen of death” on computers across their organizations. Many say they are unable to access critical data and applications.
CrowdStrike issued a statement acknowledging the issue and apologizing for the inconvenience caused and say a fix has been deployed.
“We are aware of a widespread service disruption affecting our customers,” the company statement read. “Our teams are working around the clock to resolve the issue and restore services as quickly as possible.”
Crowdstrike says that preliminary investigations suggest that the outage was triggered by a hardware failure in one of their primary data centers. This failure caused a cascading effect, leading to system-wide disruptions. Engineers and technicians have been deployed an update to address the malfunction.
Industry analysts are closely monitoring the situation, as the outage underscores the vulnerability of centralized cloud service providers.
The outage has sparked discussions online about the risks associated with relying heavily on single cloud service providers. Crowdstrike has assured its customers that it will conduct a thorough review of its systems and processes to prevent similar incidents in the future.
Last month, CrowdStrike announced that it had passed the $1 billion mark in sales. Friday morning trading on its stock was down 10%.
We are aware of a software issue affecting some airline partners this morning. Please check directly with your airline for specific flight information. pic.twitter.com/Ih02q914pP
— RDU Airport (@RDUAirport) July 19, 2024