Microsoft-linked tech outage disrupts flights, media and banking worldwide

(Reuters) -- A global tech outage on Friday crippled industries from travel to finance before services started coming back online after hours of disruption, highlighting the risks of a global shift toward digital, interconnected technologies.

A software update by global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike triggered systems problems that grounded flights, forced broadcasters off air and left customers without access to services such as health care or banking.

Accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, governments and businesses have become increasingly dependent on a handful of interconnected technology companies over the past two decades, which explains why one software issue rippled far and wide.

The outage shone a spotlight on CrowdStrike, an $83 billion company that is not a household name, but has more than 20,000 subscribers around the world including tech giants like Amazon.com and Microsoft. Crowdstrike CEO George Kurtz said on social media platform X that a defect was found "in a single content update for Windows hosts" that affected Microsoft customers.

"We're deeply sorry for the impact that we've caused to customers, to travelers, to anyone affected by this, including our company," Kurtz told NBC News' "Today" program.

"Many of the customers are rebooting the system and it's coming up and it'll be operational."

CrowdStrike shares plunged, but pared losses and were down 10.8% as of Friday afternoon. Its rivals were up, with SentinelOne shares gaining 8.8% and Palo Alto Networks up 1.5%. Microsoft was down about 1%.

Microsoft's chief communications officer, Frank Shaw, said on X that the company was supporting customers as they recover their systems after the CrowdStrike update brought down "a number of Windows systems