(NewsNation) — A technology outage disrupted industries worldwide Friday, leaving computer systems in banks, hospitals, 911 dispatch centers and airports offline.
Microsoft announced the underlying cause of the outage had been fixed, but the impact of the outage will continue to affect Microsoft 365 apps and services for the time being. The company said it is working to provide relief and will continue to keep the public updated.
Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said the outage appeared to have been caused by a “defect” in a software update it deployed to Microsoft Windows customers. CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz confirmed the outage was not a security incident or cyberattack.
But what is CrowdStrike, and how could it be responsible for a global tech system failure?
CrowdStrike, a global cybersecurity firm, tracks nation-state hacking to protect and enable tech companies and governments around the world. The company works to secure cloud data and processes from security breaches and hackers.
The company launched in 2012 with a $26 million funding round led by private equity company Warburg Pincus. CrowdStrike quickly grew, launching threat intelligence and hunting modules.
In just over a decade, CrowdStrike has been named a global leader in “cloud-delivered endpoint and workload protection,” protecting large tech companies such as Microsoft, Mac and Linux hosts. It’s also been named an industry lead for state and local governments.
The company has become one of the largest players in protecting cloud services, including Amazon’s AWS, according to Forbes.
