TEXAS, USA — A global outage due to a software update recently caused thousands planes to be grounded and prevented several companies from working.
Baylor Scott & White in Temple is just one of the many businesses that were impacted locally.
It was an isolated incident between CrowdStrike and the Microsoft Windows operating system triggered by an update.
Stanley Stinehour, Forensic Analyst at Centex Technologies, who works at Texas A&M University-Central Texas, broke down what happened.
"The CrowdStrike is a security software vendor," Stinehour explained. "They produce software to protect systems from cyberattacks. They have to keep those systems updated, so that way they can efficiently protect against emerging cyber threats. However, unfortunately, every now and again, glitches happen with an update as we've seen this morning, and it caused an issue where it rendered some computers and servers unusable, which did affect, you know, business and operations. It's like when you end up downloading an app on your phone and then they push out an update on the app and it stops working. That's a very similar situation with what happened this morning."
IT teams across the nation say there's no way to prevent something like this from happening, but there are ways to protect yourself at home.
The City of Temple's IT department sent 6 News the following about how to stay safe:
There’s no way to completely avoid these issues, and upgrades are necessary, unfortunately. There’s always a chance they could cause new issues, but if you don’t stay current, you’re exposed to new threats that could have been prevented with upgrades. Some additional steps we can take to minimize downtime, outages and losses include things like:
- Performing regular backups.
- Staying aware of current cybersecurity trends that could potentially be a threat.
- Utilizing the support resources for the software and platforms you use. Most vendors provide 24/7 dedicated support to assist with any issues and provide guidance during disruptions.
- Not being completely dependent on any one solution but using a combination of solutions and resources.
CrowdStrike does want people to know this outage was not a cyberattack. Early Friday morning, CEO George Kurtz, made a social media post saying the issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.
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