97 per cent of CrowdStrike Windows sensors back online

The vast majority of Windows sensors affected by the global CrowdStrike outage last week, at 97 per cent, are back online, according to an update by the cyber security vendor.

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz announced the update in a LinkedIn post on 26 July, claiming that the vendor had nearly bounced back from the 19 July content update that impacted 8.5 million Microsoft Windows devices globally.

“However, we understand our work is not yet complete and we remain committed to restoring every impacted system,” he said.

Kurtz also said that the company’s recovery efforts have been improved due to the development of automatic recovery techniques and by “mobilising all our resources to support our customers”.

“To our customers still affected, please know we will not rest until we achieve full recovery. At CrowdStrike, our mission is to earn your trust by safeguarding your operations. I am deeply sorry for the disruption this outage has caused and personally apologise to everyone impacted,” he added.

“While I can’t promise perfection, I can promise a response that is focused, effective and with a sense of urgency.

The near-total recovery comes days after CrowdStrike released a preliminary post incident review report on 24 July, which essentially claimed that its own systems missed the error in the update before it went live, causing Windows systems around the world to crash.

That update also included CrowdStrike’s plans on how it would avoid facing another issue like this in the future, which involves more rigorous update testing and releasing updates more gradually.