CrowdStrike has attributed a widespread IT outage affecting Microsoft Windows to a faulty security update, resulting in a significant disruption across healthcare facilities globally. The incident has led to canceled surgeries, diverted ambulances, and operational challenges at hospitals, clinics, and medical practices in countries including the U.S., U.K., Israel, Germany, and others.
Clinicians are resorting to manual processes as electronic health records and critical IT systems remain inaccessible. CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz clarified on social media that the outage was not due to a security breach but rather a technical issue stemming from a misconfigured update pushed to Windows systems early Friday.
The impact extends beyond healthcare, affecting various industries such as airlines, banks, and consumer services. In Boston, Massachusetts General Hospital experienced accessibility issues with the Epic EHR system, while Beth Israel Deconess Medical Center's IT systems briefly went offline. Reports from Israel indicate over a dozen hospitals operating manually, with ambulances redirected from affected medical centers.
In Germany, two hospitals at the University Clinic of Schleswig-Holstein canceled elective surgeries due to IT disruptions. Meanwhile, the U.K.'s National Health Service noted disruptions in general practitioner offices, forcing reliance on paper records for patient care.
Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust declared a critical incident, impacting radiotherapy treatments and prescription processing at pharmacies. Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center also reported system disruptions affecting scheduled appointments.
Efforts are underway to restore operations, with CrowdStrike issuing a workaround for affected systems. Users are advised to follow specific steps to resolve the BSOD (blue screen of death) loop caused by the faulty update.
While not a cyberattack, the incident underscores the vulnerability of global IT infrastructure and highlights the critical role of cybersecurity in healthcare and beyond. CrowdStrike continues to work closely with affected organizations to resolve the issue and ensure system stability moving forward.
For the latest updates and support, affected parties are encouraged to visit CrowdStrike's support portal and communicate through official channels.
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