Even though several days have passed since the global "blue screen storm" caused by the CrowdStirke update failure last Friday, the aftermath of this storm is still frightening. According to data from the US supply chain monitoring company Interos, this "worst IT incident in history" affected 674,600 companies around the world that have direct customer relationships with CrowdStrike and Microsoft, while more than 49 million companies were indirectly affected.
In terms of countries, the United States is the most severely affected country, accounting for 41% of all affected entities. In terms of industries, the aviation industry has been seriously injured, and many airlines, including Delta Air Lines, have not yet fully resumed services. But at the same time, global shipping terminals, finance, manufacturing, retail, telecommunications and public utilities are also generally affected.
It is worth mentioning that because CrowdStrike charges a lot of money, its customers are mainly large enterprises - especially some global multinational enterprises. This also made these large enterprises the hardest hit by this failure, while small businesses escaped. According to statistics, 271 companies among the world's top 500 companies are its customers.
The United States and Europe are severely affected
Last Friday, an erroneous update by the US cybersecurity company CrowdStrike caused the world's largest IT failure in history. More than 8.5 million devices relying on Microsoft's Windows system crashed with a blue screen. All industries, from airlines to retailers, were plunged into unprecedented chaos.
According to data from Interos, the United States is the "hardest hit area" of this storm:The incident caused by CrowdStrike may affect 674,400 entities worldwide, of which 280,700 are located in the United States, accounting for 41%.
At the same time, European countries were also seriously injured. European countries including the UK, Germany, Italy, France, Spain and the Netherlands are among the top ten countries with the most affected entities. A total of 186,700 entities in these countries are affected, accounting for 27.68% of the total.
CrowdStrike's largest market is the United States. The financial report for the first quarter of 2024 shows that the US market accounts for 70% of its revenue sources. According to reports, 82% of U.S. government agencies and 48% of the largest U.S. cities use CrowdStrike protection systems.
For this reason, in this accident, key functions that increasingly rely on digital infrastructure, such as water treatment facilities, public transportation systems, and medical services in the United States, were affected to varying degrees.
In addition to local governments, many important departments in the United States are also using CrowdStrike, such as parts of the U.S. Department of Defense and intelligence agencies.
Major industries are widely affected
The direct impact of this accident affected a wide range of industries around the world. While the impact on airlines and banks has been most widely reported in the media, data from Interos shows, the number of professional services, wholesale and various manufacturing companies affected is actually the largest, occupying most of the positions in the list of affected companies.
Among businesses served directly by Microsoft or CrowdStrike, companies in the professional, scientific and technical services industry accounted for nearly 7% of the total; followed by companies in the wholesaler industry, accounting for nearly 5% of the total; and companies in the administrative and support services industry accounted for more than 3% of the total.
Overall, Interos counts nearly 1,200 industries affected by the outage: from telecommunications to hospitals, utility providers, and even postal services, there is almost no industry that is not affected by this outage.
European and American financial industries have also been hit
The financial industry in Europe and the United States was also affected by this incident. In the banking industry, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, TD Bank, Chase, Nomura, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, JPMorgan Chase, etc. were all affected for a time.
In addition, many brokers and online trading platforms have been affected: Bank of America's MerrillEdge and Morgan Stanley's E*Trade trading platforms failed last Friday, and the transaction execution system was affected; multiple trading platforms of Stonex's Gain Capital Group and CityIndex were affected, and the trading platform was unable to log in.
However, after the incident occurred, some brokers immediately began to deal with it. As of July 23, many banks around the world have returned to normal. Many brokers have also fixed the problem and trading can now proceed normally.
For example, the reporter learned from people close to Jiaqiang Group that after several days of maintenance over the weekend, its trading platform had fully restored its system before the market opened on Monday. In addition, the broker is currently planning to launch corresponding compensation policies as appropriate based on the impact of each region. However, due to the suddenness of the accident and the huge impact, specific compensation details will take a certain amount of time to be released.
Shipping industry shutdown may exacerbate supply chain woes
Air cargo has been hit very hard, with many global airlines grounding flights and their air transport systems facing a recovery period that may last days or weeks. Delta Air Lines has been particularly hard hit, with a large number of flight cancellations still to this day.
As of Tuesday evening, Delta Air Lines had canceled an additional 478 daily flights, accounting for 13% of its regular flights, according to tracking service FlightAware.com. The total number of flights canceled since Friday's outage exceeds 5,400.
In addition, maritime freight has also been affected. Ports in New York, Houston and Los Angeles all reported temporary closures of container terminals when the incident occurred Thursday night ET, but by early Friday morning, most had resumed operations.
Rotterdam, Europe's largest port, said some companies operating at its terminals were affected. Additionally, the UK ports of Felixstowe and Tilbury both suffered severe IT outages, while ports in Poland and Asia reported similar issues.
Slow delays in cargo transportation in the aviation and maritime industries will affect various industries. For example,Semiconductor supply chainThe U.S. market, which relies heavily on air freight to transport finished goods from manufacturing hubs in the European Union and Asia, has been particularly hard-hit. As it could take days or weeks for air cargo companies to fully get their systems back online, this will only exacerbate the supply chain hurdles facing global markets.