A global tech outage linked to a software update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike (CRWD) affected nearly 8.5 million Microsoft (MSFT) devices, Microsoft said in a blog post on Saturday.
“We currently estimate that CrowdStrike’s update affected 8.5 million Windows devices, or less than one percent of all Windows machines,” the blog stated.
The software update by CrowdStrike, one of the largest operators in the cybersecurity industry, triggered system problems that grounded flights, forced broadcasters off the air, and left customers without access to essential services such as healthcare and banking.
“While the percentage was small, the broad economic and societal impacts reflect the use of CrowdStrike by enterprises that run many critical services,” Microsoft added.
CrowdStrike has since developed a solution that will help Microsoft’s Azure infrastructure accelerate a fix. Microsoft stated it is working with Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform, sharing information about the effects they were seeing across the industry.
The air travel industry was recovering on Saturday from the outage that caused thousands of flights to be canceled, leaving passengers stranded or grappling with hours of delays as airports and airlines were caught up in the IT outage.
Delta Air Lines (DAL), one of the hardest-hit airlines, said that as of 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT) on Saturday, more than 600 flights had been canceled, with additional cancellations expected.
