A week ago, the online security company CrowdStrike sent out a flawed update for PCs running Windows. The result was that 8.5 million computers were unable to start up. That caused lots of businesses and critical systems to shut down worldwide for a lengthy period.
Over the past week, both CrowdStrike and Microsoft have been working to help restore affected systems. Late on Thursday, the CEO of CrowdStrike, George Kurtz, posted a note on his LinkedIn page, announcing that "over 97% of Windows sensors are back online as of July 25."
Kurtz said the Windows restoration efforts are due "to the tireless efforts of our customers, partners, and the dedication of our team at CrowdStrike." At the same time, he also said that the company"s work is not done. He added:
To our customers still affected, please know we will not rest until we achieve full recovery. At CrowdStrike, our mission is to earn your trust by safeguarding your operations. I am deeply sorry for the disruption this outage has caused and personally apologize to everyone impacted. While I can’t promise perfection, I can promise a response that is focused, effective, and with a sense of urgency.
CrowdStrike has released a preliminary report on what exactly happened to cause a faulty update to be released to millions of Windows computers worldwide and also what steps it will take to prevent a similar occurrence.
On Thursday, Microsoft went live with a blog post on its efforts to bring back the Windows PCs affected by the CrowdStrike update. It also stated, "This incident shows clearly that Windows must prioritize change and innovation in the area of end-to-end resilience." So far, the company has not revealed any specific plans it has to try to improve Windows resiliency.