DES MOINES, Iowa — Friday's I.T. outages have impacted industries across the globe, causing flight cancellations, disruptions in emergency communication systems, and even canceling surgeries.
All of this chaos was caused by one faulty CrowdStrike software update.
So what exactly is CrowdStrike and how did one software update cause this level of commotion? Local 5 talked to a local computer repair technician in search of answers. CW Smith with CW Smith Computer Services says CrowdStrike is an enterprise-scale cyber security software. He says it’s the kind of software big companies dealing with lots of information for lots of different users are going to use.
The reach of this issue didn’t miss the Metro. Unity Point Health sent Local 5 a statement late Friday morning reading saying "UnityPoint Health has experienced some technology disruptions due to the widespread Microsoft outage. Our facilities are open as this is not impacting our ability to provide safe patient care."
So how did one faulty software update mess up flights and disrupt emergency communication?
Smith says systems like Windows are dealing with millions of lines of code.
“..., a problem with any one line of code could bring the whole system down because so many other lines of code depend on it," he explained. Smith also says security software has deeper access into operating systems than other kinds of software, which in-turn means they're more deeply embedded with multiple different parts of the operating system.
What makes this situation unique isn’t that there was a glitch in an update. It’s the scope of the ripple effect.
“It’s just another software. It’s affecting a different group of customers. It’s affecting a different level of infrastructure than the software that sits on your individual machine," Smith said.
He says the impact everyday people are going to feel is going to be accessing those interrupted services.
“Try not to panic if you can’t reach a website. Again, there’s likely nothing wrong with your individual computer. It’s the website on the other end. It’s the server on the other end," Smith explained.
CrowdStrike has clarified that this issue was not related to any kind of cyberattack. In a statement, CrowdStrike said that they’ve identified the issue, deployed a fix, and are working to help impacted customers.