Outages hit Microsoft apps linked to cybersecurity software update

Reporter: Emma Heaton Writer: Emma Heaton
Published: Updated:

Much of the world woke up scrambling as Microsoft 365 apps were hit by widespread outages early Friday morning, connected to the cybersecurity software company CrowdStrike.

From airports to hospitals, banks to news stations, IT systems were down globally. Many are still recovering.

Expert explains

Dr. Chengyi Qu, an assistant professor of computing and data science at Florida Gulf Coast University described CrowdStrike as one of the top cybersecurity software companies in the world.

“They have the major companies as their clients,” said Dr. Qu. “They could provide their software solutions, cybersecurity solutions to them, so they can just easily use their software to block any cybersecurity issues.”

How did this happen?

Dr. Qu said it all started with a minor CrowdStrike software update that caused a major problem.

“They pushed the update into [the] Windows system, and just something happened, and the old Windows system crashed,” said Dr. Qu.

Outdated versions of Windows, like Windows XP and older versions, were more likely to be affected by the outage.

Was this preventable?

“We cannot forecast these things right to avoid any of the altogether issues are software update issues. But I believe that after this situation, like most of the company may rethink about if they want to install this CrowdStrike software at all in the near future,” said Dr. Qu.

Dr. Qu believes it’s an important reminder to keep your software up to date and not solely rely on cybersecurity software to keep your information safe.

As for those impacted Friday, Dr. Qu advises companies to prepare for an outage like this.

One way to do that is to install data on a separate software system.

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