The hours in which a technological failure caused ‘dramatic damage’ around the world

The CrowdStrike platform has become the protagonist after a day that many airlines, companies and also passengers around the world will not forget.The American technology multinational has experienced one of its biggest crises in recent years due to a faulty update.

Some US airlines have been the first to report problems with their Windows protection systems. Incidents that, like a wave, have been spreading throughout the planet..

The fall in services has been caused by a flaw in an update that the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike had releasedThe problems include errors in service management operations and in the connectivity or availability of organizations’ services, Microsoft said.

The technology multinational has blamed the platform for the error. At around 13:00 hours, Spanish time, it reported that the failure has been solved, although it continues to affect some Office 365 applications and services. Most services “have already recovered” and those in which it is still “experience a residual impact” will be resolved.

However, the error has been felt throughout the morning, causing problems for airlines and institutions around the world. In Spain, long queues have been the norm at airports until the incident was resolved.

A failed update

The bug appeared during an update of its CrowdStrike Falcon platform, one of the Windows protection systems. As it has clarified in a first notification, it was an error that caused “a blue screen or bugcheck error related to the Falcon sensor“.

This company, which acts as an antivirus, made a “mistake” in the patch of the last few hours. The cybersecurity system detected that the Windows startup itself was part of a cyberattackwhich blocked each computer from logging in.

That error caused the operating system to “get stuck in a reboot state” and asked customers to contact CrowdStrike for “additional assistance” to manually resolve the restriction on each computer.

CrowdStrike President and CEO George Kurtz posted a statement on social media saying they were working tirelessly to try to fix the bug.

“This is not a security incident or a cyber attack. The problem has been identified, isolated and a solution has been implemented.. We will continue to provide comprehensive and ongoing updates on our website,” he said in a message shared on social media network X.

Martín Piqueras, professor at OBS Business School and expert in digital strategy at Gartner, says that all technology companies have “their antivirus system.” “What happened is that the update of one of these security components made it think that bad guys were getting into the computer. It has detected the operating system as bad. It is a false positive, as we say.“, Explain.

A “dramatic” damage

The effect has been total. First, American airlines have started to register problems in their systems, which has forced them to delay and cancel some flights. But the situation has spread to other countries as the hours pass.

In Spain, early on Friday, Aena reported a computer problem in its system. Airlines such as Iberia, Vueling and Ryanair have been affected throughout the morning. Many of their employees have had to work check-in manually, which has caused that, In the middle of the summer holidays, chaos has erupted, with long queues.

According to Aena sources who spoke to the EFE news agency, 7,400 operations were scheduled for this Friday on the network. But tension was not only felt in Spanish airports.

Companies, media outlets and banking institutions have experienced some complications in their operations. There have been reports of Some incidents in companies such as Iberdrola, Repsol, Europa Press or Bizum, among others.

But other countries have also experienced difficult situations. The British chain Sky News has not been able to transmit its signal for several hoursThe London Stock Exchange or British railway companies have not been able to operate normally.

In France, sources from the organizing committee have assured The country that the outage has been noticed in the Paris 2024 computer system. “Paris 2024 has been informed of a global technical issue affecting Microsoft software. This incident is affecting the IT activities of Paris 2024“, they indicated.

Omer Grossman, CIO of CyberArk, says that the event will be “one of the most important cyber problems of 2024.”The damage to business processes worldwide is dramatic.“, he notes.

He points out that the range of possibilities for the origin of the failure “ranges from human error, for example, a developer who downloaded an update without sufficient quality control, to the complex and intriguing scenario of a deep cyber attack, prepared in advance and in which an attacker activated a doomsday command“.

“Not as much investment as it should be”

Martín Piqueras explains that updates are carried out every night and that this Friday’s update was “a third-party problem.”The company has had a quality control problem. A first line of defense has failed.“, he justifies.

The digital strategy expert acknowledges that “technologies are complicated” and, therefore, it has been a single point of failure and it has been “very large.” Although he emphasizes that it serves as a “lesson learned” at a general level.

“We are increasingly relying on technology and ensuring that your system is resilient to problems is an imperative in digital resilience. There are already European laws that require it, but there is still a lot of work to be done. There is no awareness among company executives that protecting technology is extremely important.“, highlights.

There is still no awareness among business managers that protecting technology is extremely important.

Martín Piqueras criticises that there is still “no such awareness” and that, as with occupational risks in a physical company, “it must be done in the digital world”.Not as much investment as it should be is being made“, Add.

He gives an example of what It usually happens in many companies “for several years”“The head of the company hires an IT manager. He, in turn, hires a security manager. Everything goes well, until there is a technological risk. The latter warns that a significant amount of money must be spent to protect the system, but they tell him that it is a lot of money and that they do not believe that anything bad can happen,” he points out.

The CrowdStrike ruling has reopened the debate on cybersecurity and the technological dependence of companies and institutions. From within the sector, experts are calling for the implementation of a solid cyber resilience that will serve to avoid similar crises in the future.