Factbox-What is CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm behind a global tech outage?

United Airlines employees wait by a departures monitor displaying a blue error screen, also known as the 'Blue Screen of Death' inside Terminal C in Newark International Airport, after United Airlines and other airlines grounded flights due to a worldwide tech outage caused by an update to Crowdstrike's "Falcon Sensor" software which crashed Microsoft Windows systems, in Newark, New Jersey, U.S., July 19, 2024. REUTERS/Bing Guan

(Reuters) - Companies across several industries including airlines, banking and media were hit on Friday by a global tech outage tied to Microsoft's Azure cloud platform and a software issue at cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.

The issue impacted computers running the Windows operating system and CrowdStrike software. CrowdStrike said it was working with impacted customers and had deployed a fix for the issue, which stemmed from an update it issued for Windows users.