By: Erice Zhang

On July 19, 2024, omputers made errors, airline flights were delayed, and lots of stores were closed due to a bug around the world. The real reason for this mess was the “IT Crash”.

The IT Crash was caused by a cybersecurity company called CrowdStrike due to a programming error that was triggered by a senor configuration update to a company called Falcon. CrowdStrike says they confirmed their software caused issues and fixed the error, but it took time to get everything working normally.

To work out this problem, the UK government held an emergency meeting that day to discuss the issue. A spokesperson said ministers received updates on the outage, and the government was “working closely with the respective sectors and industries on the issue.”

In the morning, around 8:00 am, the CBBC channel came off the air and displayed an error message. The channel wanted to ask anyone who wanted to watch CBBC to go to the iPlayer instead of watching individual shows. Sky News was also unable to broadcast in the morning. But eventually, both channels were back on air later in the day.

Transportation companies had issues, too because they use online systems to schedule when planes or trains head off. Airports in Sydney, Edinburgh, and Berlin all have reported problems. Same as train companies.

However, not all places in the world are affected by IT. Like schools. In England and Wales don’t have problems because they already finished for the summer.

However, people in the UK have reported problems with online booking systems and appointments. They say the problem is that GP services were down to an issue with one of their systems, which was used in GPs, pharmacies, and hospitals across the UK. The real issue is that they’re honoring any appointments that were already booked; they can’t be able to book new ones, which could be a big problem in case of emergencies.

IT can causebig problems while people are dealing with how to fix the issue.

Credits: BBC News