19 July 2024 , 21:33
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Airports, train operators, banks, football clubs, news organisations and big companies in several other sectors have all been hit by a major worldwide IT outage.
George Kurtz, boss of US company CrowdStrike – which is behind the IT outage – has now said he is ‘deeply sorry’ for the chaos.
Shares in his company have dropped 15% on Wall Street – taking more than £9billion off of the company’s value.
Kurtz said the issue has been fixed but companies will likely face issues for ‘some time’.
Flights have either been grounded or ordered not to land while staff battle tech issues, which are also causing long queues of passengers yet to take off who are having to be checked in by hand.
GP surgeries have been left unable to access patient records or book appointments after the glitch locked them out of the central IT system.
Cybersecurity service Crowdstrike sent an alert to clients saying a fault in the company’s ‘Falcon Sensor’ software is causing Microsoft Windows to crash and display the ‘Blue Screen of Death’.
The company’s co-founder, George Kurtz, has seen his real-time net worth plunge, according to valuations from Forbes.