Cybersecurity company Crowdstrike Holdings saw its stock sink after becoming responsible for a global IT outage that caused disruption for countless businesses and institutions around the world.
On Friday, Crowdstrike performed what was supposed to be a routine update to Falcon Sensor, its software used to protect devices running Microsoft Windows operating systems from cyber attacks. However, the software update ended up being faulty, which caused all the devices on the receiving end of the update to crash.
With their Windows devices not working, emergency services, health institutions, airports, banks, and even government agencies couldn’t provide their usual services or perform their everyday tasks.
After learning about the problem, Crowdstrike and Microsoft issued a fix that got the systems running again.
“CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified and isolated, and a fix has been deployed,” Crowdstrike’s George Kurtz wrote on X (former Twitter).
Investors took notice of Crowdstrike’s mishap, and the company’s shares dropped by more than 14% at one point on Friday. Microsoft’s stock also took a hit, falling almost 2% in early trading before recovering later in the day.