Global Cyber Outage Disrupts Key Services Like Airline, Healthcare, Shipping, Finance

The world was struck by a global cyber outage on Friday, July 19, disrupting computer systems worldwide and unleashing chaos in the airline , shipping, finance, and healthcare industries, among others.

Knewz.com has learned that the disruption was caused in digital services that use Microsoft -based systems.

Amidst concerns that the worldwide cyber outage might be the result of a major cyberattack, the cause was soon revealed to be a single content update by global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.

George Kurtz, the CEO of CrowdStrike, clarified the cause in a post on X, where he mentioned that the company had "fully mobilized to ensure the security and stability of CrowdStrike customers."

"CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack ," Kurtz wrote in the social media statement .

"The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed. We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website. We further recommend organizations ensure they’re communicating with CrowdStrike representatives through official channels."

It was reported that the CrowdStrike update fiasco caused system problems that grounded flights , forced broadcasters off the air, and left customers without access to services such as healthcare or banking .

The airline industry was among the ones hit the hardest by the global outage, and had to shift to using handwritten boarding passes, causing further delays.

Around 5,000 commercial flights scheduled on July 19 were canceled as a result of the incident, according to reports.

Patient portals, call centers, and other healthcare operations in the United States were affected by the outage as well. The Tufts Medical Center in Boston warned patients that they might have to experience delays and that their appointments might be rescheduled.

Furthermore, the main indexes on Wall Street fell as a result of the cyber outage, raising concerns among investors . It was reported that The Cboe Volatility Index reached the highest levels since May 2024.

CrowdStrike is a titan of the global cybersecurity industry, with a clientele that includes big names like Amazon and Microsoft.

However, the cyber outage raised concerns that companies like CrowdStrike are not well-equipped to deal with issues like this, especially in the post- COVID world, where most services run on digitized systems.

The lack of confidence in CrowdStrike due to the conundrum on Friday has also been reflected in its shares, which fell a significant 12% following the incident, it has been reported.

On the other hand, SentinelOne and Palo Alto Networks – the rivals of CrowdStrike in the cybersecurity industry – have seen their shares gain 8% and 1.5% respectively.

It is worth noting that as a result of the outage, the shares of Microsoft fell by 0.8% as well.

Until networks use better contingency methods and organizations introduce better back-ups, experts believe global cyber outages will keep happening.

Gil Luria, a senior software analyst at D.A. Davidson, was quoted as saying, "This event is a reminder of how complex and intertwined our global computing systems are and how vulnerable they are."

"CrowdStrike and Microsoft will have a lot of work to do to make sure that it won't allow other systems and products to cause this kind of failure in the future," Luria added.

While services are slowly coming back online, industries will likely have to deal with a substantial backlog to get back on track, which may disrupt operations even further.