IT outage fixes ‘may still take some time’ – as cybersecurity firm CEO apologizes for chaos | US News

The source of the global IT outage has been “identified” and a “fix deployed”, but it still “may take some time”, said the head of US cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.

Banks, airlines, railway companies, telecommunications companies, broadcasters and supermarkets were affected.

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said the issue is “not a security incident or cyberattack” but is a “defect” in a “one-time content update for Windows hosts.”

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“Mac and Linux hosts are not affected,” Kurtz said.

“The issue has been identified, isolated, and a fix has been deployed.”

CrowdStrike will provide “thorough and ongoing updates” on its website, Kurtz added, referring customers to the “support portal for the latest updates.”

Speaking to NBC, Kurtz said: “We are deeply sorry for the inconvenience caused to customers and travelers. It’s been a long night, but we’re rebooting the systems.

“So it may take some time for some systems, [won’t] just recover automatically.

“But it’s our mission… to make sure every client is fully recovered.

“The system update contained a bug. We are now working with each customer to get them back online.

“When we look at the complexity of cybersecurity, we try to stay one step ahead of adversaries.

“Our systems are looking for the most recent attacks from adversaries.

“We have to go back and see what happened. If there is a negative interaction.

CrowdStrike’s “Falcon Sensor” software was allegedly causing Windows to crash and display a blue screen, according to an alert sent by the company to its customers and seen by the Reuters news agency.

The alert, issued at 05:30 GMT on Friday, reportedly included a manual workaround to fix the issue.

Microsoft said a resolution for Windows devices is “coming soon.”

“We are aware of an issue affecting Windows devices due to an update to a third-party software platform,” the IT giant said.

“We anticipate a resolution is close.”

IT outage is “causing disruption to most GP training sessions” in Englandsaid NHS England.

There is currently no known impact on 999 or emergency services, a statement said.

Airlines around the world are issuing handwritten tickets as the fallout continues.

Ryanair was distributing these tickets at Stansted Airport after having problems printing them.

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IT outage: what was affected and where?

Louise Haigh, transport secretary, said the government was working “at industry pace” to resolve IT issues causing rail and air disruption.

She added on social media: “There are no known safety issues at this time.”

Air traffic control was not affected.

A National Air Traffic Services spokesperson said: “We have no IT issues and are operating normally.”

Belfast Airport, however, has been using whiteboards instead of electronic screens for customer information.

CrowdStrike was founded in 2011 to “solve a fundamental problem,” it says on its website: “Sophisticated attacks that were forcing the world’s top companies into the headlines.”

Its approach combines “the most advanced endpoint protection with specialized intelligence to identify adversaries perpetrating attacks,” the website states.