It's estimated that more than 8m computers running Microsoft Windows crashed after cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike issued a faulty software update on Friday (19 July), with a huge range of industries and government services impacted as a result.

More than 5,000 flights were cancelled, and the likely financial impact of the outage is expected to run into billions of dollars.

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz issued an apology on Friday and stated: “The outage was caused by a defect found in a Falcon content update for Windows hosts.

“Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted.”

He emphasised that the issue “was not a cyberattack”.

In response to the incident the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) noted that installing security updates was still “an essential security practice” and organisations should continue to install them when they are available and should also continue to use antivirus products as normal.

The NCSC also warned that scammers were already attempting to exploit the incident.

It said: “Note that an increase in phishing referencing this outage has already been observed, as opportunistic malicious actors seek to take advantage of the situation. 

“This may be aimed at both organisations and individuals.”

BPIF chief executive Charles Jarrold said the federation had not heard of any industry players being directly affected, but the knock-on impacts were an obvious concern.

“As we all know cybersecurity is a massive issue. I sit on a number of boards and I very, very strongly recommend that all boards take a very close look at their approaches to cybersecurity, including their insurance policies,” he noted.

“We in print use customer data all the time, we need to make sure that we’ve got, as an industry and as organisations, robust policies in place.”

The knock-on impact of the outage continues to be felt. Delivery specialist Parcelhero has warned that global supply chains and deliveries will have been disrupted. 

Its head of consumer research, David Jinks said: “Many airports, ports, railways and retailers reported problems as a result of the IT outage. 

‘Delayed flights and issues with IT systems at airports will impact airfreight… international ports have also been impacted by the issues. For example, Poland’s largest container terminal, the Baltic Hub in Gdansk, asked companies to stop sending containers to the port.

“Time will tell the extent of disruption to international trade and industry caused by the global IT issue,” he noted.

The CrowdStrike outage has also highlighted the need for companies to have detailed, and regularly reviewed, disaster recovery and business continuity plans and to have offline, printed versions of key documents in case access to systems is compromised.

The NCSC has free advice on how to create a cyber security incident response plan on its website.