CrowdStrike and the Global IT Outage, Explained: QuickTake

A massive IT failure by CrowdStrike Holdings Inc.on Friday, July 19 grounded flights, upended markets and disrupted corporations around the world. CrowdStrike shares dropped as much as 15%. The impact of the disruption, which was compounded by an apparently unrelated issue with Microsoft Corp.’s Azure cloud services, is expected to continue for days.

What is CrowdStrike?

The cybersecurity company is a dominant supplier of software that protects businesses from ransomware attacks. CrowdStrike controls about 18% of the $8.6 billion global market for so-called “modern” endpoint detection and response software, just ahead of archrival Microsoft, according to market research ...