CrowdStrike Apologizes for July IT Outage Before U.S. House Panel

A senior executive from CrowdStrike is set to apologize before a U.S. House subcommittee for a software update that caused a global IT outage in July. The faulty update led to worldwide disruptions, including flight cancellations and affected various industries. CrowdStrike is taking measures to prevent future issues.

An executive from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike will issue an apology before a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee on Tuesday for a faulty software update that caused a global IT outage in July. Adam Meyers, CrowdStrike's senior vice president for counter adversary operations, will address the House Homeland Security Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection subcommittee, explaining that a configuration update for the company's Falcon Sensor security software triggered worldwide system crashes.

"We are deeply sorry this happened and are determined to prevent it from happening again," Meyers' testimony reads. Meyers will also outline the steps CrowdStrike has taken to review and enhance their system and content update procedures to prevent future disruptions. The incident on July 19 led to significant issues including flight cancellations and disruptions across industries such as banking, healthcare, media, and hotels, affecting around 8.5 million Microsoft Windows devices globally.

On July 19, new threat detection configurations were validated and sent to sensors on Microsoft Windows devices, but these configurations were not understood by the Falcon sensor's rules engine, causing malfunctioning sensors until the faulty updates were corrected. Delta Air Lines claims the outage forced it to cancel 7,000 flights, impacting 1.3 million passengers, costing $500 million, and has vowed legal action. CrowdStrike rejected Delta's claim of responsibility for the disruptions. Last month, after the incident, CrowdStrike revised its revenue and profit forecasts, citing a challenging environment for the coming year.

(With inputs from agencies.)