WASHINGTON — A worldwide Microsoft outage is impacting Windows systems Friday morning. Airlines, banks and other services were reporting issues nationally and here in the DMV. The exact cause of the outage is still being investigated, but is thought to be connected to cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.
According to the company's website, Crowdstrike launched in 2012 with its headquarters in Austin, Texas. The company makes software to help firms manage IT security.
"CrowdStrike secures the most critical areas of risk – endpoints and cloud workloads, identity, and data – to keep customers ahead of today’s adversaries and stop breaches," the website says.
President and CEO George Kurtz posted on X about the Microsoft outage just before 6 a.m. He stated that the issue was not linked to a cyberattack.
"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."
By 11 a.m., Kurtz issued an updated statement, reiterating the safety of the public.
"Today was not a security or cyber incident," he wrote. "Our customers remain fully protected. We understand the gravity of the situation and are deeply sorry for the inconvenience and disruption. We are working with all impacted customers to ensure that systems are back up and they can deliver the services their customers are counting on. As noted earlier, the issue has been identified and a fix has been deployed. There was an issue with a Falcon content update for Windows Hosts."
The CEO said additional updates would continue to be released on his personal social accounts and the Crowdstrike website.
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