US House Homeland Security Committee has sent a letter to CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz asking him to testify about his company’s security update that crashed millions of Windows devices last week.
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In a letter addressed to CrowdStrike CEO quoted by the Washington Post, the committee’s chair and a Tennessee Republican, Mark Green stated, “We cannot ignore the magnitude of this incident, which some have claimed is the largest IT outage in history. In less than one day, we have seen major impacts to key functions of the global economy, including aviation, healthcare, banking, media, and emergency services. Recognizing that Americans will undoubtedly feel the lasting, real-world consequences of this incident, they deserve to know in detail how this incident happened and the mitigation steps CrowdStrike is taking.”
“We are relieved that you confirmed that “this is not a security incident or cyberattack.”, However, this incident must serve as a broader warning about the national security risks associated with network dependency.” Green added.
Why is the global tech outage relevant?
A buggy update from CrowdStrike caused millions of Windows devices to crash. Users saw what is commonly referred to as the ‘blue screen of death’ as their devices were stuck in recovery mode. According to Microsoft, at least 8.5 million Windows devices were affected by the flawed update. Meanwhile, many critical sectors such as healthcare, aviation, emergency services and banking have been affected by the update.
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Although Windows devices around the world began to come back online later on Friday, businesses are still dealing with issues such as cancelled flights, backlogs, delays and more. This has led to increased scrutiny of CrowdStrike to ensure that such a massive outage does not occur in the future.
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Published: 23 Jul 2024, 07:10 AM IST