The faulty update sent by cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike that shut down millions of Windows PCs for an extended period in July will be the subject of a hearing at the US House of Representatives in Washington DC.
Reuters reports that the House Homeland Security Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection subcommittee will hear testimony on September 24 from CrowdStrike senior vice president for counter adversary operations Adam Meyers.
US Representative Mark Green, the chairman of that subcommittee, stated:
Considering the significant impact CrowdStrike’s faulty software update had on Americans and critical sectors of the economy -- from aviation to medical services -- we must restore confidence in the IT that underpins the services Americans depend on daily.
The same House subcommittee sent a letter to Crowdstrike CEO George Kurtz just a few days after the company's botched update, asking him to testify about the fallout from the PC shutdowns. It is unknown why Meyers, and not Kurtz, is going instead.
Kurtz has been pretty open in the past couple of months about apologizing for the company's security update that caused 911 shutdowns, airline delays, and other issues with businesses and government agencies worldwide. One estimate claims that the event, already named the worst IT disaster of all time, caused $15 billion in total losses.
Crowdstrike issued a final report on what it believes caused the software update to cause so much havoc in early August. It also announced plans to take measures to make sure that same kind of incident does not happen again, and also said it was hiring two independent software firms to go over Crowdstrike's systems.
While Microsoft was not directly responsible for the Crowdstrike-issued outage of millions of Windows PC, the company did recently announce it would hold what it calls a Windows Endpoint Security Ecosystem Summit on September 10. The goal of the summit is to see if the company and its partners can add improvements to PC security and infrastructure. Crowdstrike reps will be attending the event.
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