Crowdstrike shares plunge in premarket after massive global IT outage

• Crowdstrike shares dropped as much as 20% in premarket trade on Friday after an IT outage caused chaos.
• Microsoft shares also fell as issues with the firm's services disrupted airports and emergency services.
• Crowdstrike's CEO said in an X post that the issue had been identified and a fix deployed.

Crowdstrike's stock price plunged Friday as a massive IT outage caused global chaos.

The cybersecurity firm's shares plunged as much as 20% in premarket trading. As of 11 a.m. ET the stock looked set to open around 17% lower at $286 per share.

Elsewhere, Microsoft's stock also looked set to drop on Friday, falling by as much as 3% in premarket trade.

The drops come as major airlines, banks, and supermarkets are experiencing widespread disruptions linked to an IT outage after Microsoft reported problems with its online services, linked to an issue at CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm.

The global IT outage also affected the financial world. The London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) confirmed in a service announcement to clients that it was experiencing a third-party technical issue.

The issues with the LSEG meant that company updates were not published to markets through the stock exchange's news service, although the LSEG said services such as the stock exchange itself were still operating as normal.

The global outage temporarily grounded planes and impacted hospitals, banks, and supermarkets, with travelers at airports reporting widespread disruption and some grocery stores having to switch to processing cash payments.

The IT issues also impacted 911 services in the US, with emergency services in multiple states reporting that emergency lines were disrupted as a result of the outage.

In a post on X, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said the company is "actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts.

"Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed."

Microsoft acknowledged the issue in an X update on Friday morning, writing, "Our services are still seeing continuous improvements while we continue to take mitigation actions."

Microsoft and Crowdstrike did not respond to requests for additional comment from Business Insider, made outside regular US working hours.