The global IT outage on Friday caused disruptions in Asia, including the business hubs of Singapore and Hong Kong.
Last Friday, a bad software update by Texas-headquartered cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike caused a global IT outage.
According to CrowdStrike founder George Kurtz, a defect was found for the firm’s Falcon Sensor program update on the Windows operating system with users on Mac and Linux operating systems unaffected. In a social media post, he noted that the issue was identified and isolated with a fix having been deployed.
Financial Sector Impact
The global IT outage affected various industries, including financial services. In the US, there were media reports of impact on banks such as Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo.
In Asia, Singapore’s financial sector was also affected, albeit to a limited extent. According to a statement by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, some financial institutions reported effects, such as temporary disruption to SGX’s post-trade system. There were other reports of disruptions to internal-facing systems but critical systems were unaffected in all cases.
Thus far, there have been no major reports of outages in Hong Kong’s financial sector although the city’s airport experienced a collapse of its passenger check-in system.
Technological Self-Reliance
The incident could have implications for Beijing’s ongoing pursuit of technological self-reliance in a shift away from foreign providers. Chinese tech providers also took the opportunity to tout their own capabilities on Friday.
«When selecting endpoint security software, it is important to fully evaluate its defense capabilities to avoid potential security risks and ensure that business continuity and data security are not threatened,» said 360 Security Technology, China’s largest cybersecurity firm, in a social media post on Friday.
«[S]oftware vendors involved in system stability need to have stricter quality control of their software,» said QAX, another Chinese provider, in a blog post.
