CrowdStrike IT outage continues to cause global disruption | BBC News

Global computer systems in healthcare Banking and airlines are slowly coming back online after a digital outage disrupted networks in many countries the crisis was caused by a faulty software update which affected Microsoft Windows systems but it could be some time before all the backlogs are cleared while some Airline devices are beginning to return to normal after thousands of flights were cancelled operators expect some delays and cancellations to persist through the weekend many businesses are now dealing with backlogs and missed orders that could take days to resolve the global chaos has sparked concern over the vulnerability of the world's interconnected Technologies and the extent to which a single software glitch could have such widespread impact and the UK's National cyber security Center is warning that scammers could attempt to take advantage of the widespread computer problems Vinnie mckeny has the latest a day of worldwide it chaos thanks to an update meant to protect systems but which instead paralyzed them with this blue screen train services and airports were badly affected with thousands of flights grounded all over the globe from the UK to Asia and the US this flight radar data shows us Skies emptying out as the outage took hold delays and cancellations are expected to persist for sever several days here medicine deliveries to pharmacies were disrupted and GPS in England had problems accessing patient records ambulance services across the country have reported a surge in demand as a result but if you have an urgent problem you should contact your own GP surgery either in person or by telephone and if that's not possible and you're worried then you are um to go online and have a look at um messaging from 111 or call 111 it even affected software used by broadcasters knocking some TV channels off air CAF restaurants and shops were also left unable to process payments we had a lot of problems with the card machine the cards not going through it's just there's no signal at crowd strike we monitor trillions of cyber events the cause a single update from this us antivirus company you may not have heard of crowd strike before but it has nearly 2 4,000 business customers around the world many of them huge organizations like Airlines and Banks we stop a lot of bad things from happening we're deeply sorry for the impact that we've caused to customers to Travelers to anyone affected by this including our uh companies so um we know what the issue is uh we're resolving and have resolved the issue now it's recovering uh systems that are out there to be clear this wasn't a hack or Cyber attack so you don't need to change any passwords it only affected machines running Microsoft but every single one will need a manual reboot in safe mode which is not as simple as turning it off and on again Microsoft says some people have to do this as many as 15 times we've been long encouraged to keep our devices software up to date but there are now tough questions as to how one faulty update could have brought so much chaos Vincent mavin BBC News the CEO of the antivirus firm crowd strike has apologized for the disruption that was caused but there are now questions about how a routine update went so wrong madii sent this report from outside the company's headquarters in Texas there hasn't been a lot of visible activity here at the headquarters of crowd strike based in Austin Texas you can only imagine though uh what is going on inside before today crowd strike had built a pretty strong reputation in a relative ly short space of time for providing top it Security Solutions it's operating in more than a 100 countries worldwide it's relied upon by so many different types of businesses and as well as it security what crowd strike also does is investigate hacks and do some detective work on the hackers that are behind major cyber attacks now the chief executive officer of the company has said he's deeply sorry he has been speaking on an American uh business news Network today but as for why the problems happened in what was supposed to be a pretty routine update the answer to that still isn't clear but some experts have speculated that perhaps it was a lack of testing which led to some weaknesses slipping through so from now on crowd strike are going to clearly face some credibility problems uh their stock price has already fallen and there are growing questions about why so many uh different businesses and public services are reliant upon one company uh behind it all and there are growing questions too about what repercussions software firms like this should face when flaws cause major disruption ardi reporting there the widespread Global impact of a single software glitch has given many a cause for concern our technology editor Zoe kimman has more I think a lot more people are a lot more aware now of this Tech infrastructure that's really become uh part of the backbone of so much of our everyday digital lives and how catastrophic it can be when one tiny thing happens that knocks that system over I think the lessons that we're going to look at going forward number one is resilience you know also known as having a plan B I've had lots of people say to me in the last 24 hours they're thinking that they might start carrying cash again so that they can pay for stuff in the shops if the payment system goes down I've seen people around here in The Newsroom using more pens and paper than I've seen in quite a while you know people sort of mentally thinking maybe I'll just keep a backup of that important note that I want to remember just in case when I go back to my computer I've got a blue screen of death and I can't get back into it I mean how long that Legacy is going to last I don't know you know something big like this happens and everybody thinks they're going to change their behavior and then the following week they've forgotten all about it we'll have to see there are also I think big questions to be asked of uh of the Giants you know Microsoft is very clear that it was not at fter it was not an update issued by it but the question is how did it slip through its safety nets and there's a dilemma here because antivirus software in order to be effective it's got to be in your machine at a really granular level so that it can find any potential malware that's sneaking about hidden away but that also means that it's got to have this sort of access that potentially leaves you vulnerable um if if the software in itself uh as it has in the last 24 hours misfires and I think the other the question then becomes just briefly whether people have reaffirmed their faith in technology because they think more technology would fix the problem or whether they're backing away from it but what you're suggesting is really there's a temporary backing away but really the march of Technology artificial intelligence will and must go on I don't think technology is going to go backwards I think there's far too much money and power going into the big tech companies that are building and providing these tools and there are lots of people who depend on it um and are encouraged to depend on it to live our everyday lives you know the the the the benefits of it the convenience of it is something that many people have accepted but what we're also going to have to accept is that the more we use it the more these outages are going to affect us the more that we're going to notice them and the more catastrophic they could potentially be and that was Zoe Klein