Microsoft says gobal IT outage significantly affected its ecosystem

Microsoft yesterday shared that several steps are rolled out so that its customers across the world are cushioned from the impact. 
On July 18, CrowdStrike, an independent cybersecurity company, released a software update that began impacting IT systems globally. 
Although this was not a Microsoft incident, the entity said it has significantly affected its ecosystem. 

To address this, Microsoft said it has taken several steps in collaboration with CrowdStrike and other stakeholders to support our customers and mitigate the impact.
“We’re working around the clock and providing ongoing updates and support. Additionally, CrowdStrike has helped us develop a scalable solution that will help Microsoft’s Azure infrastructure accelerate a fix for CrowdStrike’s faulty update. 

“We have also worked with both AWS and GCP to collaborate on the most effective approaches,” Microsoft said. 
It shared that while software updates may occasionally cause disturbances, significant incidents like the CrowdStrike event are infrequent. 
Microsoft estimates that CrowdStrike’s update affected 8.5 million Windows devices, or less than one percent of all Windows machines. 

“While the percentage was small, the broad economic and societal impacts reflect the use of CrowdStrike by enterprises that run many critical services,” it said. 
Microsoft noted that the incident demonstrates the interconnected nature of the broad ecosystem — global cloud providers, software platforms, security vendors and other software vendors, and customers. 
“It’s also a reminder of how important it is for all of us across the tech ecosystem to prioritize operating with safe deployment and disaster recovery using the mechanisms that exist,” Microsoft said.