‘What happens when the security system itself has a bug?’: Friday’s technology outage explained

TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — A global technology outage had a massive impact in the Tampa Bay area Friday, crippling travel, affecting bank and credit card transactions, and even kicking hospitals offline.

“I looked at the board, it was like ‘cancelled,'” said Martha Sousa, who had a chaotic morning at St. Pete–Clearwater International Airport.

“They said, ‘your flight’s cancelled, and there’s no more scheduled for the rest of the day,'” she said.

So Sousa’s $59 ticket to Pennsylvania turned into a $355 ticket and a day later.

This comes after what’s being called the largest IT outage in history, knocking out airlines, banks and hospital operations.

The problem is being blamed on a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.

“All sorts of applications run using CrowdStrike to protect them from malicious attacks, hackers and other threats,” Tampa cybersecurity enthusiast Joey de Villa said. “The problem is, what happens when the security system itself has a bug?”

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said it was his firm’s falcon sensor software that lead to the so-called ‘blue screen of death’ on Windows PCs.

“The system was sent an update, and that update had a software bug in it and caused an issue with the Microsoft operating system,” Kurtz said.

Now some are using Friday’s global disruption to point to an even bigger problem: how reliant our world is on technology.

“We have to continue to build resilience in our systems, we have to continue to build redundancy,” United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken said. “We have to continue to diversify, so we’re not reliant as best possible on any single point of failure.”

United States Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg took to social media saying, “If you’re affected by today’s airline tech issues, bookmark FlightRights.gov .”

“We created an easy-to-use dashboard in 2022 to show which airlines cover meals and hotels, and provide free rebooking when an airline causes a major delay or cancellation,” he said.

Buttigeig said if a flight is cancelled and a passenger choose not to travel, they do not have to accept a travel voucher. He said passengers can request a cash refund.

If an airline is not following their FlightRights.gov commitments, passengers can file a complaint with the US Department of Transportation here.

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