A massive tech outage is causing worldwide disruptions. Here’s what we know

Experts stress that Friday’s disruptions underscore the vulnerability of worldwide dependence on software that comes from only a handful of providers.

“It is an ‘all our eggs are in one basket’ situation,” Craig Shue, professor and computer science department head at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, said in emailed commentary. “This lets us make sure our ‘basket’ is high quality: the software provider tries to identify threats and respond to them quickly. But at the same time, if anything goes wrong and the basket fails, we have a lot of broken eggs.”

What is CrowdStrike?

CrowdStrike is a U.S. cybersecurity company that provides software to companies around the world and across industries. It bills itself as being the globe’s most advanced cloud-based security technology provider.

“We stop breaches,” the cybersecurity company says on its website.

According to its website, CrowdStrike was founded in 2011 and launched in early 2012. It listed on the Nasdaq exchange five years ago. Last month, the Austin, Texas, company reported that its revenue rose 33% in the latest 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. It reported having 29,000 subscribing customers.

CrowdStrike has a partnership with Amazon Web Services and its “Falcon for Defender” security technology is designed to supplement Microsoft Defender to prevent attacks.

Is there a fix?

Disruptions on Friday continued hours after CrowdStrike first identified the issue. But both the company and Microsoft said that they’re working to get systems back online.

In an emailed statement, CrowdStrike said that it was “actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts” — adding that a fix “had been deployed” for the identified issue.

CrowdStrike President and CEO George Kurtz later apologized. “We understand the gravity of the situation and are deeply sorry for the inconvenience and disruption,” he wrote on social media platform X.

Microsoft spokesperson Frank X. Shaw said that the company was “actively supporting customers to assist in their recovery.” Both CrowdStrike and Microsoft are also appearing to engage IT personnel on official online channels, such as Reddit.