The Tech Giant Microsoft
Microsoft is one of the largest software provider companies in the technological sector, with a market size of about $3.249 trillion by 2024 and a workforce of 221,000 employees all over the world. This company has provided wonders to every company in the world, whether it is with their technologies or their services.
No company in today’s time can start their operations without the help of Windows OS or operating system from Microsoft and their office software applications; regardless of all the competitors, this company provides their products within a precise price range. Their products come in two variations: one-time purchases and subscription-based services; their price of operating software revolves around $139 to $199, while the price range of their services revolves around $6.99 to $99.9 based on the time period. If operated through the web, they let their services be used free for all, yet with some limitations while they can enjoy it properly.
The “Blue Screen of Death”
On 19th July 2024, Microsoft users from all over the world started to face a problem resulting in their computer screens turning blue, and it stopped working until Microsoft resolved that issue. If your system was showing a blue screen on Friday it was due to the outage that has occurred because of a technical issue that happened during the update operation of their sensors. The blue screen of death or BSOD puts a halt on the operations of various companies from different sectors, resulting in a loss of $23 billion from the market value of Microsoft.
The main reason for this technical issue was a sensor configuration update that had to be done for Falcon while it had been done by Crowdstrike during a routine update on the cybersecurity side of the company. The major effect of this outage was on the airline companies as they had to halt their operations until the issues had been resolved; also, various government agencies that use Microsoft softwares in their operations have stopped their procedures for that day.
This issue was felt by various banks all around the world for which various customers were unable to access their money. The Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) in India faced severe problems with this technical issue that happened on Friday, the last day of the week for the stock market before the weekend. In the retail sector, various fast food chains have to stop their operations and close their outlets on that day due to the system going totally offline, and no operations can be performed on that day.
Crowdstrike and the apology from their CEO due to this outage
Programmes for cybersecurity in the Microsoft company servers, such as CrowdStrike, which is also a tech giant yet they operate on providing cyber security to companies, automatically and routinely update to take into account new strategies that malevolent hackers have uncovered. Additionally, there’s always a chance that a software upgrade won’t work with other apps. The CrowdStrike upgrade ought to have been standard procedure, but a coding flaw caused Windows to clash, which ended up being disastrous.
This update was performed early on 19th July 2024, and within Friday afternoon, the news of BSOD started to appear, and the company then identified the issue and started working on it. Yet China is the only country that has not been affected by the outage in a large manner because they block third-party software and applications from operating in their country, and they have precise versions of Microsoft software to be used in their country. The number of devices that have been affected by this outage was nearly about 8.5 million, which is a smaller number of users compared to their total user base of 1.2 billion all over the world.
The CEO of Crowdstrike, George Kurtz, has apologized to all the users who have faced this problem, and they have worked through this to solve it immediately. In some of the devices, the issues were automatically resolved, and in some of the devices, it needed manual assistance to open the software. For this, they have uploaded manual instructions on how the users can help them start their devices again.
FAQ
Which airline companies have been affected due to this outage?
In India, the companies were Indigo Airlines, Air India Express, Spice Jet and Akasa Air. While in the USA the companies were United Airlines, Delta Air and American Airlines.
Which country has been most and least affected by the outage?
India and the USA were the ones mostly affected, while China was the one with the least effect from this technical issue.
For which company the outage happened?
Crowdstrike, a company that provides cyber security services to Microsoft, during a routine update of their servers related to the sensors has faced this problem.
