TECH & AI
An impacted check-in terminal at Ronald Reagan Washington
National Airport during the CrowdStrike IT Outage in July 2024
WHAT WAS THE GLOBAL IT OUTAGE IN JULY 2024 ?
CrowdStrike ’ s Windows 95 IT Outage was perhaps one of the most disruptive system blackouts to have ever occurred . Earlier in 2024 , businesses and essential services around the world were left scrambling to find the route cause , whilst Microsoft Windows workstations took services offline and left users with the infamous ‘ blue screen of death ’ appearing on Windows PCs .
Outages of this scale can have immense consequences . In a post-pandemic , digitallyreliant world , an incident like this demonstrates the far-reaching impact of what can happen if essential technology fails .
The cause of the incident was later revealed to be a defective update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike on Windows PCs . Such a widespread outage was significant , leaving numerous airlines , hospitals and banks unable to access their services or customer information .
WATCH NOW
BBC News : CrowdStrike to face US Congress over global IT outage
Writing at the time , we warned of the consequences of severe , large-scale disruption , noting in Technology Magazine : “ As the level of cyberattacks continues to rise each year , businesses are being advised to ensure their data is protected and their systems are robust enough to withstand an outage or even a breach .”
READ OUR BREAKING NEWS COVERAGE OF THE EVENT
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