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House Panel Calls CrowdStrike CEO to Account for Worldwide Outage

Penka Hristovska
Penka Hristovska Senior Editor
Published on: July 23, 2024
Penka Hristovska Penka Hristovska
Published on: July 23, 2024 Senior Editor

House Republicans have invited the CEO of CrowdStrike to testify in a congressional hearing regarding the global tech outage that affected roughly 8.5 million Windows devices around the world on Friday.

Rep. Mark Green (R-TN), chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, and Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-NY), head of the cyber and infrastructure subcommittee, sent a letter to CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz on Monday, asking him to find a time to make an appearance before the committee.

“While we appreciate CrowdStrike’s response and coordination with stakeholders, we cannot ignore the magnitude of this incident, which some have claimed is the largest IT outage in history,” the congressional panel wrote in its letter to Kurtz.

Lawmakers have given Kurtz until the end of the day on Wednesday to schedule a time for his testimony. They say they want to understand how the incident occurred, the national security risks associated with network dependencies, and the best strategies to prevent similar incidents in the future.

“Recognizing that Americans will undoubtedly feel the lasting, real-world consequences of this incident, they deserve to know in detail how this incident happened and the mitigation steps CrowdStrike is taking,” the lawmakers wrote.

A spokesperson for CrowdStrike said in a statement the company “is actively in contact with relevant Congressional Committees. Briefings and other engagement timelines may be disclosed at members’ discretion.”

The request marks the first congressional action against CrowdStrike concerning the widespread incident that potentially caused billions in damages to various companies.

CrowdStrike said the outage was caused by a “defect” in a software update and wasn’t due to a cybersecurity attack. The disruption led to thousands of flights being canceled or delayed over the weekend and also impacted hospitals, emergency services, and some government offices.

Services across various industries gradually resumed on Friday, but companies faced backlogs, delays, and other issues.

About the Author
Penka Hristovska
Penka Hristovska
Senior Editor
Published on: July 23, 2024

About the Author

Penka Hristovska is an editor at SafetyDetectives. She was an editor at several review sites that covered all things technology — including VPNs and password managers — and had previously written on various topics, from online security and gaming to computer hardware. She’s highly interested in the latest developments in the cybersecurity space and enjoys learning about new trends in the tech sector. When she’s not in “research mode,” she’s probably re-watching Lord of The Rings or playing DOTA 2 with her friends.

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