Microsoft Outage: 8.5 Million Devices Affected By CrowdStrike Update

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New Delhi: Microsoft announced that a global tech outage caused by a software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike impacted nearly 8.5 million Microsoft devices on Saturday. In a blog post, Microsoft stated, "We currently estimate that CrowdStrike's update affected 8.5 million Windows devices or less than one percent of all Windows machines."

Microsoft announced that CrowdStrike has developed a scalable solution to help accelerate a fix for the issue affecting Microsoft’s Azure infrastructure. Further, Microsoft has collaborated with Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform to find the “most effective approaches” to resolve the problem.

A software update by the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike caused widespread system problems worldwide. It grounded flights, disrupted broadcasters, and left customers without access to essential services like healthcare and banking.

The disruptions were serious enough for the White House to say that President Joe Biden had been briefed about it and teams of US officials were in touch with private sector players to find an early resolution.

“While software updates may occasionally cause disturbances, significant incidents like the CrowdStrike event are infrequent,” Microsoft said.

“We currently estimate that CrowdStrike’s update affected 8.5 million Windows devices, or less than 1 per cent of all Windows machines. While the percentage was small, the broad economic and societal impacts reflect the use of CrowdStrike by enterprises that run many critical services,” it added.

Microsoft also said that the outage demonstrated the “interconnected nature of our broad ecosystem -- global Cloud providers, software platforms, security vendors and other software vendors, and customers".

The outage was also a reminder, the company noted, saying "it showed how important it is for all of us across the tech ecosystem to prioritise operating with safe deployment and disaster recovery using the mechanisms that exist”. (With agency inputs)