Pakistan urges Microsoft users to update software as global tech outage eases after disruption

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) on Friday urged Microsoft clients to update software from official support portal to restore tech services after a global computer system outage sparked widespread disruptions.
Services from airlines to health care, shipping and finance started coming back online late Friday after the outage was resolved, and companies were dealing with backlogs of delayed and canceled flights and medical appointments, missed orders and other issues that could take days to resolve.
A software update by global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, one of the largest operators in the industry, triggered systems problems that grounded flights, forced broadcasters off air and left customers without access to services such as health care or banking.
PTA, which regulates Internet in Pakistan, said the significant global IT outage was caused by a “faulty update” from cybersecurity provider CrowdStrike, impacting thousands of Windows machines worldwide.
“This outage also affected consumers of Microsoft in Pakistan. The fault forced affected PCs (personal computers) and servers into a recovery boot loop, preventing proper startup. Some Internet services are also affected because of this,” it said in a statement.
“The fault was identified, isolated and a fix is provided by Crowdstrike, as per Crowdstrike’s website. Clients are now suggested to update the software from their support portal to restore services.”
CrowdStrike is not a household name but it is an $83 billion company with more than 20,000 subscribers around the world including 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.
CrowdStrike has one of the largest shares of the highly competitive cybersecurity market, leading some industry analysts to question whether control over such operationally critical software should remain with just a handful of companies.
The outage also raised concerns that many organizations are not well prepared to implement contingency plans when a single point of failure such as an IT system, or a piece of software within it, goes down. But these outages will happen again, experts say, until more contingencies are built into networks and organizations introduce better back-ups.
- With additional input from Reuters