Microsoft Windows experienced a global fallout on Friday as a result of an anti-virus software update from cybersecurity software firm CrowdStrike, and the Judiciary Police (PJ) said in a statement later that day that eight local critical infrastructures, comprising a cash remittance company, three gaming enterprises, two public utilities and two insurance companies had been affected to “varying degrees”.
Microsoft released a statement on its blog on Saturday in response to the global information technology (IT) outage, saying that CrowdStrike, an independent cybersecurity company, released a software update on Thursday that began impacting IT systems globally, affecting Microsoft’s ecosystem.
The statement by David Weston, vice president of Microsoft’s Enterprise and OS Security, pointed out that “significant incidents like the CrowdStrike event are infrequent”, noting that CrowdStrike’s update affected, as estimated, 8.5 million Windows devices, or less than one percent of all Windows machines.
Friday’s PJ statement pointed out that “so far, the incident has affected eight critical infrastructures in Macau to varying degrees, including the external disruptions on a cash remittance company’s business system; and the failure of computer systems in three gaming enterprises, two public utilities and two insurance companies, which, however, have not disrupted their external public services, and their business operations have remained normal”.
The PJ Cybersecurity Incident Alert and Response Centre said in the statement that it would continue to monitor the development of the global cyber outage and strengthen communication and coordination with relevant government entities and private organisations to ensure timely and effective response to any potential cyber risks, underlining that “this global cyber security incident had only a limited impact on Macau, which was manageable”.
