Crowdstrike says IT problems will take time to fix

The boss of cyber-security firm Crowdstrike has admitted it could be "some time" before all systems are back up and running after an update from the company triggered a global IT outage.

Experts are warning that it could take days for big organisations to get back to normal. Although there is now a software fix for the issue, the manual process required will take a huge amount of work, they said. The global outage has led to almost 1,400 flights being cancelled, while banking, healthcare and shops have all been affected.

The issue was caused when an update from Crowdstrike caused Microsoft systems to "blue screen" and crash. The problem piece of software was sent out automatically to the firm's customers overnight which is why so many were affected when they came into work on Friday morning.

It meant their computers could not be restarted. Writing on X, Crowdstrike chief executive George Kurtz said: "The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed."

In an interview on NBC's Today Show in the US, Mr Kurtz said the company was "deeply sorry for the impact that we've caused to customers". "Many of the customers are rebooting the system and it's coming up and it'll be operational," he said, but added: "It could be some time for some systems that won't automatically recover."