What is CrowdStrike? What to know about cybersecurity company connected to global IT outage

A widespread Microsoft outage linked to cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike disrupted flights, banks, media outlets and companies around the world on Friday and highlighted dependence on software from a handful of providers.

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz posted on social media platform X that the company “is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts.”

He said: “This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”

CrowdStrike on its site says the company “protects the people, processes and technologies that drive modern enterprise. A single agent solution to stop breaches, ransomware, and cyber attacks—powered by world-class security expertise and deep industry experience.”

The company said it is recognized as a leader in “modern endpoint security.” The company is a publicly-traded company on the NASDAQ under the symbol CRWD. According to CNBC, the company has a market cap of more than $73 billion.

CNBC says CrowdStrike “is a global cybersecurity company that provides cloud-delivered protection of endpoints, cloud workloads, identity and data.”

CrowdStrike statement on global IT outage

On the company’s website, it says the issue was with a “Windows sensor update.”

In the statement it said: “CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed. We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website. We further recommend organizations ensure they’re communicating with CrowdStrike representatives through official channels. Our team is fully mobilized to ensure the security and stability of CrowdStrike customers.”

The issue affected Microsoft 365 apps and services, and escalating disruptions continued hours after the technology company said it was gradually fixing it.

Microsoft 365 posted on X that the company was “working on rerouting the impacted traffic to alternate systems to alleviate impact in a more expedient fashion” and that they were “observing a positive trend in service availability.”

The outages affected major companies, including Visa, Amazon, Delta and United.

CrowdStrike CEO appears on TODAY show

“We’re deeply sorry for the impact that we’ve caused to customers, to travelers, to anyone affected by this, including our company,” Kurtz said Friday morning on TODAY.

Kurtz said the company knows what the issue is and has deployed a fix.

“We know what the issue is, we’re resolving and have resolved the issue,” Kurtz said. “Now it’s recovering systems that are out there…the system was sent an update, and that update had a software bug in it and caused an issue with the Microsoft operating system.”

Kurtz stressed the outage was not due to a cyber attack.

“Many of the customers are rebooting the system and it’s coming up and it will be operational because we fixed it on our end,” Kurtz said.

He said it “could be some time” for some systems that are not automatically recovering, but said CrowdStrike will work with their customers while they get back up and running.