A week after a faulty update caused a global IT outage that grounded flights and knocked TV stations off-air, CrowdStrike’s boss, George Kurtz, has revealed that nearly all systems are back online. In a post on LinkedIn, Kurtz stated that “over 97%” of systems running its software were back online as of July 25th.
Microsoft had previously estimated that 8.5 million machines had been disabled by a bug in CrowdStrike’s software, which means approximately 250,000 devices remain offline. Kurtz thanked the “tireless efforts” of customers and staff while apologizing for the incident. He promised a response that is focused, effective, and urgent.
Although the company is still working on fixing the remaining devices, progress has been made. Solutions were shared online by CrowdStrike and Microsoft within 24 hours of the problem being reported. However, the remedies required physical access to devices, which proved challenging in some cases. Microsoft has released a tool to speed up the process, and automated recovery tools have enhanced the recovery efforts.
CrowdStrike has provided more details about how the issue arose in a Preliminary Incident Review and has committed to measures to prevent a similar incident in the future. However, the company faced criticism for giving staff and firms they work with a $10 UberEats voucher as an apology for the disruption. Some felt that the token of thanks was inadequate considering the financial losses suffered by top US companies.
According to insurance firm Parametrix, the top 500 US companies, excluding Microsoft, suffered $5.4 billion in financial losses from the outage. CrowdStrike is working to restore every impacted system and ensure that such an incident does not happen again.
