Businesses around the globe came to a screeching halt on Friday after an issue with cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike’s (CRWD) software took out computer systems running Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows platform.

The problem, which CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz attributed to “a defect found in a single content update for Microsoft Windows hosts,” hit everything from airlines to grocery store chains to emergency services systems in Alaska.

Shares of CrowdStrike cratered in premarket trading dropping more than 12% on the news. Shares of Microsoft were down more than 1%. CrowdStrike provides cybersecurity capabilities for enterprise customers around the world.

"Today, CrowdStrike become[s] a household name, but not in a good way. While the disruption will take time to settle down, it will not change the positive long-term view of CrowdStrike or [the] cybersecurity sector," Wedbush analyst Dan Ives wrote in a note to clients Friday.

"In a nutshell, this is [a] PR nightmare for CrowdStrike and Microsoft and others [to] get caught in this tornado along with millions of people currently stranded at airports around the globe," he added.

The widespread impact of the outage points to Crowdstrike's growing ubiquity across various markets and institutions. According to the cybersecurity firm, more than 50% of Fortune 500 companies currently use its software including 8 of the top 10 financial institutions and some 43 US states.

"We're deeply sorry for the impact we've caused to customers, to travelers, to anyone impacted by this, including our company," Kurtz said during an interview on The Today Show on Friday. He said that a fix was being deployed to address the failure and get computers back up and running.

But the damage was already done.

New York and New Jersey's Port Authority, for example, warned customers not to travel to area airports unless they had confirmation that their flights were still scheduled to depart, as carriers were forced to ground aircraft due to the outage. In Alaska, 911 and non-emergency call centers went down. Sky News in the UK was unable to broadcast live news, while bankers at firms, including JPMorgan, were unable to log into their systems.

According to Kurtz, CrowdStrike issued a fix for the failure, which began rolling out to its customers around the world. Computers started coming back online as the update landed on various systems, though it could take time before the entire problem is resolved.

Email Daniel Howley at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @DanielHowley.

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