On July 19, 2024, a significant IT outage at CrowdStrike led to global disruptions, grounding thousands of airline flights and affecting hospitals, banks, and retailers. The outage was attributed to a defect in a content update for CrowdStrike's Falcon cybersecurity platform on Windows-hosted computers, as stated by George Kurtz, the company's founder and CEO. Despite not being caused by a cyberattack, the incident highlighted vulnerabilities, with adversaries and opportunistic criminals closely observing the situation. The outage affected 8.5 million Windows devices and resulted in a $60 million loss in sales for CrowdStrike.