(NEXSTAR) – CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm based in Texas, has said that a global technology outage affecting banks, hospitals and other industries was caused a defect in one of its security updates.
“This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed,” the company said in a statement obtained by the Associated Press.
The outage, on Friday morning, caused widespread disruptions to computers running Microsoft Windows operating systems, The Verge reported. Specifically, the update took the computers were offline, then caused them to be stuck in a “recovery boot loop” which prevented their systems from restarting right away, according to the outlet.
As a result, computer systems that help to manage some airports, hospital systems and even 911 call centers went down, with outages still affecting many systems as of Friday morning, CNET reported. Microsoft has said it had completed “mitigation actions” in a tweet shared just before 11 a.m. EST, though that may not come as much relief for those relied on CrowdStrike to keep their computer operations running smoothly.
What is CrowdStrike?
CrowdStrike bills itself as a “global security leader,” providing software to help businesses around the world identify, prevent or stop security breaches. The company has a partnership with Amazon Web Services and its “Falcon for Defender” security technology, designed to supplement Microsoft Defender to prevent attacks.
The faulty update pushed out by CrowdStrike was related to its Falcon Sensor software, the company confirmed.
“We are working hard to provide comprehensive and continuous updates with our global customers as quickly as possible,” reads a blog post published Thursday morning.
CrowdStrike also offered workarounds for organizations attempting to restart their computer systems.
The company, based in Austin, was founded in 2011 but launched in early 2012, according to its website. Last month, CrowdStrike reported that its revenue rose 33% in the last quarter from the same quarter a year earlier — logging a net profit of $42.8 million, up from $491,000 in the first quarter of last year. On Friday, after news of the outages, the stock tumbled, the Associated Press reported.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.