Widespread global tech outage disrupts flights, banks, hospitals and media outlets

(AP)A global technology outage caused by a faulty software update grounded flights, knocked banks and media outlets offline, and disrupted hospitals, small businesses and other services on Friday, highlighting the fragility of a digitized world dependent on just a handful of providers.

The trouble with the update issued by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike and affecting computers running Microsoft Windows was not a hacking incident or cyberattack, according to CrowdStrike, which apologized and said a fix was on the way.

But hours later, the disruptions continued — and escalated.

In an interview with the TODAY Show, Crowdstrike CEO George Kurtz explained that the outage was caused by a software bug included in an update that went out to Windows machines. Kurtz said the issue was identified quickly and a fix was sent out, bringing some computers back online quickly.

"We identified this very quickly and remediated the issue," he said. "And as systems come back online, as they're being rebooted, they're coming back and they're working."

Despite that, Kurtz said some systems weren't able to accept the automatic update to fix the bug. For those systems, it could be a while before operations are restored.

"Many of the customers are rebooting the system and it's coming up and (being) operational because we fixed it on our end," he said. "Some of the systems that aren't recovering, we're working with them. It could be some time for some systems that just automatically won't recover."

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[charleswoods]

It was a warning shot of sorts. Ironically, bank on the idea becoming a reality of possibly having to go back to 1964 analog style of technology, if not back to sticks and stones.