What is Crowdstrike? What to know about company linked to global IT outage

A global tech outage disrupted major airlines, media companies, banks, and telecommunications firms worldwide Friday morning.

Australia's government said the outage appeared to be linked to an issue at cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike, which is used by over half of Fortune 500 companies, the U.S. firm said in a promotional video this year.

According to an alert sent by Crowdstrike to its clients and reviewed by Reuters, the company's "Falcon Sensor" software is causing Microsoft Windows to crash and display a blue screen, known informally as the "Blue Screen of Death."

The alert, sent at 1:30 a.m. ET on Friday, also shared a manual workaround to rectify the issue. A Crowdstrike spokesperson did not respond to emails or calls requesting comment.

In a post on X, Crowdstrike CEO George Kurtz said the company is "actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts." Kurtz also clarified that the incident is "not a security incident or cyberattack."

In the post, Kurtz says the issue has been identified, a fix has been deployed, and that the company will "continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website." Additionally, Kurtz said the company is "fully mobilized to ensure the security and stability of Crowdstrike customers."

According to its website, Crowdstrike launched in 2012 and currently has the "world's most advanced cloud-native platform that protects and enables the people, processes and technologies that drive modern enterprise."

Tech outage live updates:Global tech outage grounds flights, hits banks and media businesses

Flight cancellations:Over 670 US flights canceled as global IT outage prompts ground stop

Global tech outage leads to flight cancellations, delays

Air passengers worldwide faced delays, cancellations, and problems checking in as airports and airlines were caught up in the outage.

Several U.S. carriers, including American Airlines, United Airlines, and Delta Air Lines, issued ground stops for all their flights early on Friday due to communication problems, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

There were over 2,000 flights canceled and more than 6,100 delays as of 1 p.m. ET, according to flight-tracking website FlightAware. Most airlines were able to resume operations as the morning progressed, but many said they expected disruptions to continue throughout the day.

Around the world, airports and airlines advised customers to arrive earlier than normal for flights. Analysts said the outage was likely tied to a glitch in Microsoft software used globally.

Microsoft said users might be unable to access various Office 365 apps and services due to a "configuration change in a portion of our Azure-backed workloads."

Microsoft said in a statement on X that "the underlying cause has been fixed," however, residual impacts continue to affect "some Microsoft 365 apps and services. We're conducting additional mitigations to provide relief."

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement on X Friday morning it and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency are working with Crowdstrike, Microsoft and federal, state, local and critical infrastructure partners to "fully assess and address system outages."

Outages impacting other industries as well

From the United Kingdom to Singapore, the effects of tech outages were far-reaching on Friday.

British broadcaster Sky News went off-air, and train companies in the U.K. reported long delays. Departure boards at several U.K. airports appeared to freeze, according to passengers who posted reports on social media.

London's Stock Exchange reported experiencing disruptions. Some hospitals also reported difficulties processing appointments and several chain retail stores said they couldn't take payments. The soccer club Manchester United said on X that it had to postpone a scheduled release of tickets.

In Australia, media, banks, and telecoms companies suffered outages.

There was no information to suggest the outage was a cyber security incident, the office of Australia's National Cyber Security Coordinator Michelle McGuinness said in a post on X.

New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority said some of its systems were offline due to a worldwide technical outage. It said MTA train and bus services were unaffected.

Contributing: Kim Hjelmgaard, Christopher Cann, Zach Wichter and Josh Rivera, USA TODAY

Gabe Hauari is a national trending news reporter at USA TODAY. You can follow him on X @GabeHauari or email him at Gdhauari@gannett.com.