Largest Worldwide IT Outage in History

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According to Crowdstrike, which is usually the place big companies turn to for help during cyberattacks, an update to their software has caused Microsoft’s Windows operating system to crash, resulting in the infamous Blue Screen of Death. Given Crowdstrike works with 25,000 businesses, and how integral Windows is to the running of so many of the world’s computers, this error has had monumental consequences.

American Airlines grounded all its flights this morning, alongside many other airlines around the world. As well as many 911 services, banking systems, DOT systems plus more that used Crowdstrike, a software used to prevent cyberattacks on PCs it is installed on.
 
Starbucks has been affected, at least on the national level. As from what I had heard from management, no store in the US currently has access to the mobile ordering system, and at least one store in our town completely lost access to the POS system.
 
That explains why Starbucks was only accepting cash this morning…

Good thing my systems don’t use Crowdstrike, and our patches go through someone else before we install them.
 
Yeah that happened this morning. It was knocking television networks offline and everything else in the UK.
 
Honestly, who ever pushed out this patch broke the golden rule to never patch on a Friday, no one wants their weekend ruined in dealing with stuff that breaks last moment.

It's also clear someone, on both sides no less, pushed out a patch without dev environment testing first, which for something like this is inconceivable.

I imagine a few people are out of a job and now Crowdstrike has a huge ass target for cyberattackers.

Starbucks has been affected, at least on the national level. As from what I had heard from management, no store in the US currently has access to the mobile ordering system, and at least one store in our town completely lost access to the POS system.

Reminds me when our credit card system at Staples went down at the height of back to school season, rough day was hell.
 
Being connected to so many services makes it a wonder that this hasn't happened before.
 
Hopefully, IT departments can prevent Crowd Strike updates and other software updates from causing a large IT outage in the future.
 
I think the largest worldwide IT outage in history happened on july 19, 2024 by CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity company.
 
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