A global technology outage is affecting everything from personal computers to major businesses Friday morning.
Microsoft 365 users have reported outages that have crippled personal computers, airlines, media companies, banks and telecommunications companies around the world. The software giant said it is aware of and working to resolve an issue “impacting users’ ability to access various Microsoft 365 applications and services.”
Friday morning, Crowd strikea US company that claims to be used by more than half of the Fortune 500 companies, said one of its recent content updates had a flaw that affected Microsoft’s Windows operating system.
Here’s what we know so far about the outage and what’s affected.
What is Crowdstrike?
Crowdstrike is an American company launched in 2012 and currently has “the world’s most advanced cloud-native platform that protects and enables the people, processes and technologies that power the modern enterprise,” according to the company’s website.
Was Microsoft’s Outage a Cyberattack?
After Crowdstrike said it was a flaw in an update, it also added that the incident was “not a security incident or cyberattack.”
“The issue has been identified, isolated, and a fix has been deployed,” Crowdstrike said in a statement. Microsoft said that “the underlying cause has been fixed,” but that residual impacts continue to affect some of its Microsoft 365 apps and services.
What causes Microsoft 365 to go down? What’s happening?
The blue screen of death.
We all know this, and according to an alert sent by Crowdstrike to its customers and reviewed by Reuters, the company’s “Falcon Sensor” software causes Microsoft Windows to crash and display a blue screen.
Why are planes grounded? Affected airports in Tennessee, USA
According to reports and social media posts from airports in Tennessee and around the United States, Hundreds of flights were cancelled on Friday morningSpirit, American Airlines, Delta Airlines and United Airlines were among those that grounded or canceled flights Friday morning, disrupting the travel plans of thousands of people.
A third-party vendor is experiencing a global technology outage that is impacting Spirit’s reservation system and flight operations. We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience. We encourage customers traveling today, July 19, to check this page for updates before they travel… pic.twitter.com/MaSWXTpEYE
— Spirit Airlines (@SpiritAirlines) July 19, 2024
More than 600 flights have been canceled and more than 900 delays have been reported as of 5:45 a.m. CT, according to the flight tracking website. FlightAware.
Tennessee airports were affected by the outage. Passengers should check with their airline to see if their flights have been affected.
This article was originally published on Nashville Tennessean: Why is Microsoft down? How Crowdstrike’s global outage affects Tennessee
