Effects of CrowdStrike Global IT Outage
Is it safe to fly during the CrowdStrike outage?
CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity company that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to detect, prevent, and respond to various cyber threats. However, on July 19, 2024, it deployed a faulty update that caused a worldwide IT outage, significantly affecting, amongst others, the airline industry.
While this IT outage has caused widespread disruptions to airline operations, such as flight delays and cancellations, it does not inherently make flying unsafe. The safety of flights is maintained by multiple layers of redundancy that are independent of these IT systems.
This situation apparently reminds me of the Y2K scare that greatly concerned the aviation industry about 24 years ago. The concern then was the potential for significant disruptions in aviation due to the widespread use of date formats that could misinterpret the year 2000.
Many computer systems used two-digit year formats, posing a real risk of interpreting the year 2000 as 1900, which could have led to errors in date calculations and system failures.
As a result, remediation efforts were undertaken worldwide, including code reviews, system updates, and extensive testing. The lack of significant issues on January 1, 2000, is often attributed to these proactive measures.
Regulatory bodies, such as the FAA mandated compliance and readiness against these threats. The extensive remedial efforts largely succeeded, with the absence of any major problems on January 1, 2000.
I vividly recall flying a Boeing 777 to Auckland on that date, confident in the knowledge that all necessary remedial actions had been undertaken to address any eventualities. This was significant because this third-generation plane was highly computerized, especially with the flight management system and the industry’s efforts ensured its safe operation.
While some initially thought the Y2K scare was a scam, the underlying issue was real and required significant effort to address. The coordinated global response helped prevent potential disruptions, making the Y2K scare a valuable lesson in the importance of maintaining and updating critical infrastructure and software systems.
Thankfully, the CrowdStrike IT outage, while disruptive, does not affect the safety of flights.
The only inconvenience, as an air passenger, would be delayed flights and crowded airports.
There might be lawsuits to recover losses if it can be proven that the outage was caused by negligence.
As of now, the outage appears to have been mostly fixed, especially when hundreds of Microsoft engineers and experts were deployed to work directly with customers to restore services.
View a YouTube video ‘CrowdStrike tech outage still causing issues globally’