Blue screen of death issue affects 8.5 million Windows devices

According toSputnikThe CrowdStrike incident affected a series of global service sectors, paralyzing the operations of many industries, shutting down public services, forcing many airlines to suspend flights and some TV stations to stop broadcasting on July 19.

Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike later admitted that the global computer system outage with a "blue screen of death" was related to its software update.

Microsoft said that while the incident affected less than 1% of Windows devices, the widespread economic and social impact showed that businesses rely on CrowdStrike to operate many critical services.

"We estimate that the CrowdStrike update affected 8.5 million Windows devices, more than 1% of all devices running Windows. While this percentage is small, the broad economic and societal impact shows that businesses rely on CrowdStrike to operate many critical services.", Microsoft said in a statement on July 20.

The statement also added that hundreds of Microsoft engineers and experts have been mobilized to fix the problem.

CrowdStrike, for its part, has helped develop a solution that helps Microsoft’s Azure infrastructure speed up incident response. Microsoft added that it is also working with Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform to share information about the impact Microsoft sees across the industry.

CrowdStrike is one of the world's most prominent cybersecurity service providers, with nearly 30,000 registered customers. The company has a market capitalization of approximately $83 billion and is a favorite technology company among investors, thanks to its high revenue growth and profit margins.

The July 19 computer outage will undoubtedly hurt CrowdStrike’s market prospects. It will force customers and investors to rethink their reliance on a single cybersecurity company, and it will open the door to potential competitors like Palo Alto Networks and SentinelOne.