All the best CrowdStrike employee memes as global IT crisis continues

As if the heat in the UK wasn’t bad enough, an IT outage concerning cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike is wreaking havoc across the globe, impacting the likes of airports, banks and GPs and even taking TV channels off air.

Big brands impacted include Ryanair, Govia Thameslink Railway (which looks after the Southern, Thameslink, Great Northern and Gatwick Express rail franchises) and J D Wetherspoons.

“We can confirm the Wetherspoons app is currently not working. We are working hard to resolve the situation. However, customers can pay for their food and drinks in cash,” a spokesperson said.

A tragedy.

According to CrowdStrike founder and CEO George Kurtz, the whole palaver concerns “a defect found in a Falcon content update for Windows hosts” - in other words, an update to their security software (designed to protect against cyberattacks) resulted in system crashes and the infamous “blue screen of death” on Windows computers.

Kurtz added: “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this. I encourage everyone to remain vigilant and ensure that you’re engaging with official CrowdStrike representatives.”

With Microsoft systems affected as part of the outage, a spokesperson for the tech company told indy100: “[On Friday], a CrowdStrike update was responsible for bringing down a number of IT systems globally.

“We are actively supporting customers to assist in their recovery.”

And while it’s all getting very technical with talk of “Channel File 291” and faulty configuration updates, social media users are having fun joking about the one unfortunate employee responsible for inadvertently bringing the world to its knees:

Well, if it makes everything a little more bearable...

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