Today’s news / US lawmakers to grill CrowdStrike CEO
Flights all over the world were cancelled when a global IT outage hit 8.5 million Windows devices last week. Photo: Jessica Mcgowan/Ritzau Scanpix

US lawmakers to grill CrowdStrike CEO

US House members seek to question CrowdStrike’s CEO, George Kurtz, after a security update last week caused a global outage in Microsoft services. The House Committee on National Security has invited Kurtz to testify, recognizing CrowdStrike’s response to the incident but not overlooking its significance, referred to as the biggest IT outage by some. A mistake in an antivirus program update disrupted services worldwide on Friday, affecting an estimated 8.5 million devices running Windows. This figure represents less than 1% of all Windows machines according to Microsoft, who provided instructions for remediation and dispatched engineers to assist customers. Airports, hospitals, banks, and stores were disrupted internationally. CrowdStrike, with 29,000 clients, including major firms like Google, Amazon, and Intel, hasn’t yet responded to the invitation.