A week after a faulty software update caused a global IT outage that grounded flights and knocked TV stations off-air, the boss of cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has revealed that nearly all affected systems are back online.
In a post on LinkedIn, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said “over 97%” of systems running the company’s software were back online as of July 25th. Microsoft had previously estimated that 8.5 million machines had been disabled by a bug in CrowdStrike’s software, suggesting that approximately 250,000 devices remain offline.
Kurtz thanked the “tireless efforts” of customers and staff as he apologized for the incident, acknowledging that the company’s work to fix the remaining devices “is not yet complete” but stating that they are “committed to restoring every impacted system.”
Bringing systems back online has proven to be a time-consuming process, as the remedies shared by CrowdStrike and Microsoft required physically accessing the affected devices. However, the development of automated recovery tools has “enhanced” the recovery efforts, according to Kurtz.
CrowdStrike has also provided more details about how the issue arose and committed to measures to prevent a recurrence. However, the company’s attempts to make amends, such as offering a $10 UberEats voucher, have been criticized as inadequate, with some users feeling that the gesture did not adequately address the substantial financial losses incurred by businesses due to the outage.
According to insurance firm Parametrix, the top 500 U.S. companies, excluding Microsoft, suffered $5.4 billion in financial losses from the outage.
