Microsoft global tech outage: When all systems in the world go down

The tech outage marks the risk of depending on a single firm's software, report Shivani Shinde & Ashutosh Mishra

The technology outage on Friday proved the peril of an increasingly interconnected digital world. A software update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike affected 8.5 million Microsoft Windows devices, causing one of the largest tech outages. Less than 1 per cent of Windows machines were affected, according to Microsoft, but it had a cascading effect on centralised software systems.

CrowdStrike’s Falcon update led to the ‘blue screens of death’ in Windows systems, disrupting emergency services, airlines, financial transactions and individuals.

The outage raised questions about the rising trend of single point of failure in technology infrastructure and centralised software