8.5 million.
That's how many Windows devices were affected, according to Microsoft, by the global IT disaster that on Friday caused massive disruptions to, among other things, airlines, stock exchanges, and stores around the world.
According to the software giant, which is behind the operating system, this represents less than one percent of all Windows devices in the world.
8.5 million devices may seem like a small number. But it's not, assures IT security specialist Karl Emil Nikka. There are two reasons for this.
In this figure, both Windows computers and servers are included, he says.
Computers and servers
Nikka explains it as if an employee's computer at a company is affected, it's not worse than the employee getting an extra day off.
But if a server is affected, it can happen that an entire department or entire company suddenly cannot conduct its operations.
It can also be about service providers that have been affected, which in turn affects companies that are dependent on them, for example, for payment services.
This outage has had consequences that also affect customers who do not themselves use Crowdstrike Falcon, which is the cause of the problem. When a service provider is affected, the other organizations are also affected, says Nikka.
Probably the largest outage
IT experts call the outage the largest that has ever occurred. The closest is the Wannacry ransomware, which in 2017 had a widespread spread and infected around 300,000 computers in 150 countries, according to BBC.
The current outage began when the IT security company Crowdstrike sent out an update of the Falcon program to its customers. PC users who had Falcon installed on their computers were met with a blue screen with an error message.
Correction: In an earlier version of this text, Microsoft's explanation was described incorrectly.
