Global outage becomes a teaching moment [Video]

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (WSAZ) – Since CrowdStrike pushed out an update causing computers to crash across the globe, flight cancellations and delays along with payment processing methods have continued to have trouble.

Bill Gardner, associate professor in cybersecurity and forensics at Marshall University, said although it wasn’t an attack, there were security problems that stemmed from the mistake.

“Once it happened we saw phishing emails that said apply this patch which is in this attached email, so attackers did leverage the outage to try to further an attack, but the actual outage itself was not a nefarious act,” Gardner said.

Marshall plans to have the new cybersecurity building completed by 2026. With the growth in that field, Gardner said the outage will serve as a teaching point for students.

“We need to train our students that humans make mistakes and sometimes that ends up in technology which causes outages like this,” …