Global tech outage underscores fragility of a digitized world
A faulty software update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike caused technological chaos worldwide on July 19. The incident has grounded flights, knocked down some financial companies and news outlets, and disrupted hospitals, small businesses and government offices. The scope of the outages highlighted the fragility of a digitized world dependent on just a few providers for key computing services.
The unfortunate update affected CrowdStrike’s customers running Microsoft Windows, the world’s most popular operating system for personal computers. It was not the result of hacking or a cyberattack, according to CrowdStrike, which apologized and assured a fix on the same day. Businesses and governments worldwide experienced hourslong disruptions — their computer monitors glowing blue with error messages — and they scrambled to deal with the fallout.
CrowdStrike’s CEO George Kurtz said some of their systems will require time-consuming manual fixes. Thousands of flights were canceled and tens of thousands were delayed, leading to long lines at airports in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Latin America. Airlines lost access to check-in and booking services in the heart of the summer travel season. By late afternoon Eastern time, the worst appeared to be over, though there were still lingering cancellations and delays due to the cascading effect of the disruption.
In the Philippines, airports experienced congestion and flight disruptions due to the global cyber outage which resulted in some procedures needing to be done manually. According to Katrina Son’s report on “Saksi,” families continued to wait for their delayed flights on Friday night at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 3. Some airlines have begun manual processes in their check-in counters.
“Hindi nila alam which gate we are [supposed to go to]. Everything is manual, naka-handwrite ‘yung gates na naka-open,” said passenger Jazz, who’s supposed to be bound for Bali, Indonesia. (They don’t know which gate we are supposed to go to. Everything is manual, the open gates are hand-written). NAIA has deployed additional security personnel to control the growing crowd after local airlines Cebu Pacific and AirAsia were hit by the outage. In Davao City, Cebu Pacific has also begun manual check-in following two cancellations and several delayed flights.
US-based CrowdStrike said in a recording on its customer service line that the problem was related to “the Falcon sensor,” referring to one of its products used to block online attacks. The company says it has 29,000 customers. In an interview on NBC’s “Today Show,” CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz apologized, saying the company was “deeply sorry for the impact that we’ve caused to customers, to travelers, to anyone affected by this, including our companies.”
Several local TV stations in the U.S. were prevented from airing the news early Friday, and some state and local governments reported problems at courts, motor vehicles departments, unemployment agencies, emergency call centers and other offices, but as the day progressed many of the systems were getting back to normal. Affected hospitals had problems with appointment systems, forcing them to suspend patient visits and cancel some surgeries.
References: A faulty software update causes havoc worldwide for airlines, hospitals and governments (yahoo.com)
PH airports disrupted as procedures go manual due to global cyber outage (msn.com)
Global IT outage: Airlines, businesses affected by CrowdStrike, Microsoft issues | AP News
