Thousands of airlines, hospitals, banks, businesses and media outlets, including the Lehigh Valley Press, experienced a technology glitch July 19 when a CrowdStrike configuration update caused a worldwide network outage.

The outage stranded thousands of people at airports, disrupted 911 centers and left businesses and computer users with blue screens.

According to CrowdStrike Holdings Inc., Austin, Texas, the company is a global cybersecurity leader with an advanced cloud-native platform for protecting endpoints, cloud workloads, identities and data — to keep customers ahead of today’s adversaries and stop breaches.

CrowdStrike Founder and CEO George Kurtz issued the following statement on the company website after the outage July 19.

“I want to sincerely apologize directly to all of you for the outage,” Kurtz wrote. “All of CrowdStrike understand the gravity and impact of the situation.

“We quickly identified the issue and deployed a fix, allowing us to focus diligently on restoring customer systems as our highest priority,” Kurtz continued. “The outage was caused by a defect found in a Falcon content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This was not a cyberattack.

“Nothing is more important to me than the trust and confidence that our customers and partners have put into CrowdStrike,” Kurtz added. “As we resolve this incident, you have my commitment to provide full transparency on how this occurred and steps we’re taking to prevent anything like this from happening again.”

In a CrowdStrike update July 24 titled “Preliminary Post Incident Review Executive Summary PDF,” the company stated on its website, “On July 19, 2024, at 04:09 UTC, as part of regular operations, CrowdStrike released a content configuration update for the Windows sensor to gather telemetry on possible novel threat techniques. These updates are a regular part of the dynamic protection mechanisms of the Falcon platform. The problematic Rapid Response Content configuration update resulted in a Windows system crash.”

On a July 23 WFMZ TV 69 segment of “What the Tech?,” Jamey Tucker spoke with cybersecurity expert David Malicoat, chief information security officer of Direct Marketing Solutions, who awoke to the news of the outage that Friday. In the segment, Malicoat commented on the outage.

“It did not surprise me that there was an issue with the rollout,” he said. “So, from my perspective, I was not shocked. I was not alarmed. It was, ‘Oh man, it actually happened.’”

Tucker stated, “While not surprised by the occurrence of such an issue, Malicoat emphasized the gravity of the situation. The fact that a leading cybersecurity company, entrusted with protecting industries from cyber threats, could inadvertently cause such widespread disruption highlights the potential for catastrophic consequences when critical systems rely on single points of failure.”

Malicoat further pointed out many critical industries depend on just three major cloud service providers — Google, Amazon and Microsoft.

“Those are the big cloud providers, and if any of those goes down on a wide scale, we would see something very similar,” Malicoat said.

Malicoat advises individuals to consider their personal reliance on technology and to have contingency plans in place for essential needs such as water, electricity and transportation.

“The recent IT outage serves as a stark reminder that our reliance on technology, while essential, also exposes us to risks that demand proactive measures to ensure resilience and preparedness,” Tucker stated in the printed version of the segment.

The CrowdStrike outage is not the first tech outage this year. AT&T cellphone users experienced an hourlong outage Feb. 22 because of a technical error.

While technology makes up a major part of our everyday lives, it is important to have backup plans in place before the next outage strikes.

The following are some ways to help prepare for the next tech outage.

• Keep some cash on hand should banks and ATMs be impacted by another technology outage.

• Keep gas in your car should gas pumps stop working.

• Print paper copies of all important documents such as medical information, banking, insurance and utility statements and mortgage or rent documents with all account numbers on them.

• Write the names of family, friends, important phone numbers and addresses in a small notebook or address book and keep it with your important documents.

Network and cellphone outages can occur at any time, so now is the time to be prepared.

Susan Bryant

editorial assistant

Parkland Press

Northwestern Press