Microsoft reveal the CrowdStrike outage which paralysed the world affected 8.5million of their devices as experts warn disruption to systems will continue into next week sparking more fears of train, plane and NHS chaos [Video]

13:49 EDT 20 Jul 2024, updated 18:25 EDT 20 Jul 2024

The CrowdStrike outage which disrupted industries across countries worldwide, affected 8.5million Windows devices, Microsoft has confirmed.

Flights were grounded, GP surgeries disrupted and news channels taken off air on Friday after a faulty software update by the cybersecurity company caused blue screens to appear on computers across the globe.

While the issue of the Falcon Content update has now been fixed, the impact was still being felt in the UK on Saturday, with thousands of passengers still left stranded as a result of the major outage.

In a statement this afternoon, Microsoft said it estimated the error had affected at least 8.5million machines or one per cent of Windows computers worldwide.

But the tech giant acknowledged the ‘broad economic and societal’ impact of the outage, worsened by the number of enterprises running critical services and infrastructure which rely on CrowdStrike.