The US House Committee on Homeland Security has summoned CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz for a public testimony over the global Windows outage last week, which crippled industries across the world.
The committee chairman Mark E. Green, MD and Chairman of the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection Andrew R Garbarino sent the letter to Kurtz requesting his public testimony.
Kurtz has been asked to show up before 1700 ET on Wednesday for a hearing.
"We cannot ignore the magnitude of this incident, which some have claimed is the largest IT outage in history. In less than one day, we have seen major impacts to key functions of the global economy, including aviation, healthcare, banking, media, and emergency services," the letter read.
The outage last Friday grounded thousands of flights across countries, scuppered surgeries, and sent most enterprise work in tailspin in its wake. How much damage the hours-long outage caused is yet to be determined.
"This incident must serve as a broader warning about the national security risks associated with network dependency. Malicious cyber actors backed by nation-states, such as China and Russia, are watching our response to this incident closely.
"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 letter said.
One of the biggest IT crashes on Friday was due to a faulty software update, affecting almost all the sectors including the financial industry, aviation, public transport, corporates, media broadcasting, and hospitality. Some experts called it the largest IT outage in history.
Over 5,000 global flight cancellations were reported by an aviation analytic firm, FlightAware. Major airports from Los Angeles to Singapore also experienced delays due to outages. Hospitals could not access scheduled appointments and patient records in several countries.
Kurtz said on X on July 19: "As this incident is resolved, you have my commitment to provide full transparency on how this occurred and the steps we're taking to prevent anything like this from happening again."
Kurtz confirmed that this was not a cyberattack or a security problem.
CrowdStrike called it a "Falcon sensor" issue on its support page. The issue impacted computers running the Windows operating system, displaying a 'blue screen of death'.
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