Microsoft Blames Global IT Outage on Stringent EU Rules

Europe’s regulatory framework is to blame for the worst IT outage in history, according to software giant Microsoft.

The software behemoth mentioned a 2009 agreement with the European Commission as the reason it couldn’t implement security measures to prevent the CrowdStrike upgrade.

Many security providers might install software at the heart of a computer’s operating system, known as the kernel. In contrast, Apple announced in 2020 that it would improve security and reliability by blocking access to the kernel on Mac computers.

A Microsoft representative stated that the company could not implement a comparable adjustment due to the terms of the EU agreement.

CrowdStrike’s Falcon system has privileged access to the kernel, so millions of Windows machines and servers failed to load last week due to a defective upgrade. The technology is supposed to prevent cyber assaults.

According to CrowdStrike, a defective anti-viral update was the root cause of the worldwide outage.

Microsoft uses the business to manage system upgrades.

After the meltdown, Microsoft said it would be implementing “mitigation actions” to fix the problems.

On X, they wrote that their services are still seeing continuous improvements, adding that they are dedicated to handling the incident with utmost seriousness and urgency and will not rest until they have resolved the consequences for the remaining damaged Microsoft 365 apps.

On Saturday, Microsoft announced that it affected 8.5 million Windows machines. Airlines had to cancel their flights, companies couldn’t take credit card payments, and healthcare facilities had to close.

One Microsoft representative said that the deal struck in 2009 gives makers of security software the same level of access to Windows that Microsoft gets. The goal of this merger was to break Microsoft’s stranglehold on the browser market.

Apple, on the other hand, is part of a closed ecosystem, and so was unaffected by this update glitch.