On 19 July 2024, a faulty update to security software produced by CrowdStrike, an American cybersecurity company, caused many computers and virtual machines running Microsoft Windows to crash, affecting a wide range of users, including airlines, airports, banks, hospitals, stock markets, and broadcasting services. The error was discovered and a fix was identified on the same day, but the outage continues to delay airline flights, cause problems in processing electronic payments, and disrupt emergency services. The incident has been characterised as the “largest IT outage in history”.
Stuff like this outage is upsetting because it reinforces these mentalities of using outdated stuff at a corporate level.
Like sure it looks good right now when everything is borked, but companies running 32 year old operating systems is why it takes me 5-10 business days to get money back for overpaying a prepay on gas. Or I can’t just pay my online bills and post, they need 4-6 days to post. Not just software mainframes either, my workplace hands out 6 year old dell workstations, with windows 10 forced onto it, so they chug and struggle because win10 is eating all 2gb of ram, wanting more, and running like ass all because some penny pincher doesn’t want to upgrade.