A senior executive at cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has apologized for a faulty software update that caused a worldwide IT outage in July. Adam Meyers, senior vice president for counter-adversary operations at CrowdStrike, issued the apology during a hearing before the House Homeland Security Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection subcommittee. Meyers expressed deep regret over the incident and assured that measures are being taken to prevent such occurrences in the future.
The global outage in July was caused by an undetected error in a software update for Windows in a security system called Falcon, produced by CrowdStrike. This resulted in millions of computers running Microsoft Windows crashing, impacting various industries including banking, healthcare, media companies, and hotel chains. Flight cancellations also occurred worldwide.
CrowdStrike has conducted a thorough review of its systems and is implementing plans to strengthen content update procedures to emerge as a stronger company. As of July 29th, approximately 99 percent of customers’ systems were back up and running.
Lawmakers referred to this incident as the largest IT outage ever recorded and emphasized how interconnected global networks have become. They highlighted the need for robust cybersecurity practices across all industries.
Meyers clarified that this incident was not a cyberattack from foreign threat actors but rather an error during CrowdStrike’s content update process. He echoed previous statements made by the company regarding internal analysis finding that the bug discovered during July’s update was not exploitable by threat actors.
CrowdStrike is currently facing a class-action lawsuit from shareholders who allege that inadequate software testing created substantial risk leading to the global computer outage. The lawsuit claims that CrowdStrike concealed this risk from shareholders while its share price fell 32 percent following the incident.
Despite these challenges, CrowdStrike remains committed to its mission of stopping breaches and will continue investing in innovation according to CEO George Kurtz.
