After a seemingly harmless update by CrowdStrike caused a global IT outage, the company’s CEO, George Kurtz, has been called to testify before Congress, according to the Washington Post. Republican leaders of the House Homeland Security Committee have demanded that Kurtz appear on Capitol Hill to explain the reason behind the outage and the “mitigation steps” the company is taking to prevent similar incidents in the future.
The letter addressed to Kurtz emphasized, “We cannot ignore the magnitude of this incident, which some have claimed is the largest IT outage in history. In less than one day, we have seen major impacts on key functions of the global economy, including aviation, healthcare, banking, media, and emergency services. Recognizing that Americans will undoubtedly feel the lasting, real-world consequences of this incident, they deserve to know in detail how this incident happened and the mitigation steps CrowdStrike is taking.”
CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity company that provides end-to-end security to companies such as Microsoft. Notably, Microsoft revealed that the recent IT outage affected 8.5 million Windows devices globally. It crippled airports, emergency 911 services in the US, businesses, banks, and even supermarkets.
Responding to the situation, Kurtz stated that a faulty update triggered the outage and disrupted digital services worldwide. He clarified on X that it was not a cyberattack or security threat and that a patch has been issued to resolve the issue.
Jake Moore, Global Security Advisor at ESET, a cybersecurity company, commented on the incident, “The inconvenience caused by the loss of access to services
