CrowdStrike Inc chief executive officer and founder George Kurtz has confirmed that the current global information technology (IT) issue affecting many airlines, businesses and organisations is not a security incident or cyberattack.

In his LinkedIn post, he said the company is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts, but Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted.

“This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated, and a fix has been deployed.

“We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website,” said Kurtz.

He further said CrowdStrike recommends that organisations communicate with the company’s representatives through official channels.

“Our team is fully mobilised to ensure the security and stability of CrowdStrike customers,” he added.

An update from CrowdStrike led to a mass tech outage worldwide on devices running the Windows operating system.

This included several international airports and airline operations worldwide, with some facing temporary closure and ground stops as well as disruptions to most airline check-in and reservations systems.

Apart from that, the outage also affected operations in rail companies, media companies, and banks.

Most Microsoft apps fully restored

Meanwhile, Microsoft said the underlying cause of the outage issue at Microsoft 365 apps and services has been fixed.

Several Microsoft 365 apps and services have been restored to full functionality, Anadolu Agency reported it saying in a statement.

“Residual impact is still affecting some Microsoft 365 apps and services, and Microsoft 365 engineering is continuing to conduct additional mitigation actions to provide relief.

“We’re continuing to observe an increase in functionality and availability for the remaining impacted scenarios and we’re monitoring this closely to ensure we’re progressing towards full recovery,” it noted.

The event is being treated with the highest possible priority, Microsoft underlined.

- Bernama

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