Businesses globally faced a significant IT outage on Friday, impacting financial services, doctors' offices, and some TV broadcasters. The aviation industry suffered greatly, with grounded planes, delayed services, and airports providing guidance to passengers.

The disruption occurred when cybersecurity company CrowdStrike encountered a major issue due to a recent tech update on Friday morning.

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz assured customers that the problem stemmed from a defect in a single content update for Windows hosts, emphasizing that Mac and Linux hosts were not affected.
Kurtz clarified on social media that the incident was not a security breach or cyberattack, as the problem had been identified, isolated, and resolved with a fix.

An expert suggested that this could potentially be the most extensive IT outage in history.
In a separate incident, Microsoft announced the restoration of its cloud services following an outage on Friday, although some users continued to experience problems.