Microsoft Corporation, the American multinational technology giant, has revealed that the recent global cyber outage affected 8.5 million Windows devices.
The outage, which occurred on July 19, disrupted operations across airlines, media, and financial services worldwide.
Nearly 4,000 flights, accounting for almost 4 percent of all scheduled flights globally, were canceled due to the incident.
But in a statement on Saturday, Microsoft attributed the outage to a software update performed by CrowdStrike, an independent cybersecurity company.
The statement said “although the incident was not from Microsoft”, the update impacted information technology (IT) systems worldwide.
The IT company said that 8.5 million of its devices were impacted and that CrowdStrike had provided a scalable solution.
“Given it impacts [on] our ecosystem, we want to provide an update on the steps we’ve taken with CrowdStrike and others to remediate and support our customers,” said David Weston, vice-president of enterprise and operating systems (OS) security.
“Since this event began, we’ve maintained ongoing communication with our customers, CrowdStrike and external developers to collect information and expedite solutions.
“We recognize the disruption this problem has caused for businesses and in the daily routines of many individuals.
“We’re working around the clock and providing ongoing updates and support.
“Additionally, CrowdStrike has helped us develop a scalable solution that will help Microsoft’s Azure infrastructure accelerate a fix for CrowdStrike’s faulty update.
