How did one CrowdStrike mistake stop the world? We asked 3 experts. [Video]

Editor’s note: Check out our oft-updated live blog for all new developments about the Microsoft/CrowdStrike outage.

Updating your system is imperative to keeping it safe from cyber attacks and other threats. But sometimes it goes wrong — like it did late this week.

CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity company that protects companies and users from cyberattacks, made a mistake, leading to a global meltdown. Users with Windows computers saw the “blue screen of death”, flights were grounded, banks went dark, and websites shut down.

“This was an update to the software that got pushed out to its company’s clientele around the world, but particularly those that were using Windows servers, and within a certain time period,” Derrick Cogburn, a professor at American University, the Executive Director of the AU Institute on Disability and Public Policy, and the Faculty Co-Director of the Internet Governance Lab, told Mashable. “So it wasn’t everybody that uses CrowdStrike, but a …