What we know about the reasons behind global tech outage

A global outage has hit some of the biggest organizations in the world, including Fortune 500 companies such as major banks, healthcare and energy companies – the result of a failed update from a key cybersecurity provider.

A Canadian technology analyst says the incident shows the nearly "universal" use of Windows products for key digital infrastructure highlights how quickly security issues can start to cascade.

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"It's so universal, so common, the impact is much wider than would normally be the case." Carmi Levy, a Canadian technology expert, told CTV Your Morning's Anne-Marie Mediwake on Friday. "We're talking about companies all around the world."

Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike says they've isolated the issue behind the outage and that it wasn't a cyberattack — they also say a fix is on the way.

The software detects and blocks hacking threats, but like other cybersecurity products, it requires deep-level access to a computer’s operating system

"The irony is they're a cyber security company… they certainly didn't provide a lot of security here," says Levy.

When will it be fixed?

So how long could a fix take? According to Levy, it may take systems a while to recover, even after CrowdStrike is able to roll back the affected update and deploy a fix.

"It's never as fast as we wish," he says. "The problem here is, is that it's going to take a while for all of those devices that have been affected to be reverted back to where they were before this."

Many millions of computers use the affected software, Levy warns, and that's one of the factors that will complicate a recovery once a fix is completed.

"It'll take hours for the machines themselves to reboot and get back online," Levy says. "It'll probably take even longer than that to undo all of the damage that was caused when all of these devices went down."

‘Universal’ use of Windows

The outage has caused problems across the globe, grounded flights, knocking banks and hospital systems offline and even taking down some media broadcasters – causing escalating disruptions as the issue impacted Microsoft 365.

"It's integral to the function of Windows," Levy says. "And of course, we know that Windows is used across all industries."

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"Many of these companies have Windows machines running in data centres controlling the critical services that run their businesses," Levy explains. "Including Microsoft, which uses a platform called Azure, to run its cloud services."

The nearly "universal" use of Windows for digital infrastructure is one of the key reasons that the CrowdStrike update failing has caused such chaos, because as Levy warns it's led to systems failing "across the board."

A word of warning

Even though the outage isn't believed to have been the result of a cyberattack, that doesn't mean systems are safe, and Levy says many businesses and organizations may not have a recovery plan for a digital "disaster" or business continuity plan for an outage of this scale.

"This could be a business killer for a lot of companies who weren't prepared."

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He also warns bad actors could take advantage during the chaos, warning that cyberattacks could rise in the days to follow —both in volume and severity.

"We also might see cyber criminals take advantage of the fact that there's so much disruption."