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CEO George Kurtz has released an update following the disastrous 19 July Falcon update that crashed 8.5 million Windows PCs worldwide.
Embattled CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz has released a follow-up statement on the ongoing remediation efforts following the release of an unvalidated security update to its CrowdStrike Falcon platform that caused chaos to airlines, hospitals, and retailers worldwide.
And, thankfully, the news is good.
“I want to share that over 97 per cent of Windows sensors are back online as of July 25. This progress is thanks to the tireless efforts of our customers, partners, and the dedication of our team at CrowdStrike. However, we understand our work is not yet complete, and we remain committed to restoring every impacted system,” Kurtz said in a post on LinkedIn.
“To our customers still affected, please know we will not rest until we achieve full recovery. At CrowdStrike, our mission is to earn your trust by safeguarding your operations. I am deeply sorry for the disruption this outage has caused and personally apologise to everyone impacted. While I can’t promise perfection, I can promise a response that is focused, effective, and with a sense of urgency.
“Our recovery efforts have been enhanced thanks to the development of automatic recovery techniques and by mobilising all our resources to support our customers. We published a preliminary incident report (PIR) detailing how this happened and the measures we’re taking to prevent such incidents in the future.”
Kurtz added that the company is “committed to building on our mission to stop breaches” and will be focusing on improving its customer controls and the resilience of its platform.
“Customer obsession has always been our guiding principle, and this experience has only strengthened our resolve,” Kurtz said
“Thank you for your patience, support, and trust.”
The issue was caused by an update sent out to the company’s Falcon endpoint detection and response platform – specifically, a single misconfigured Rapid Response Content update sent out to the Falcon Sensor on those platforms.
The update, which had slipped through the validation process, triggered an unexpected exception that, in the words of CrowdStrike, “could not be gracefully handled, resulting in a Windows operating system crash (BSOD)”.
Kurtz has been called to testify to the US Congress over the matter.
“The American public deserve[s] to know in detail how this incident happened and the mitigation steps CrowdStrike is taking,” Congressmen Mark Green and Andrew Garbarino said in a letter calling Kurtz to testify.
“While we appreciate CrowdStrike’s response and coordination with stakeholders, we cannot ignore the magnitude of this incident, which some have claimed is the largest IT outage in history.”
The incident is expected to rack up costs in the billions for the companies impacted by the outage.
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.
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