Palau avoids technology outage due to failed cybersecurity update

Author: Olkeriil Eoghan Ngirudelsang

Palau was not affected by a massive internet outage that hit several countries on Friday after cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike deployed a faulty update to computers running Microsoft Windows.

CrowdStrike’s CEO acknowledged the problem in a statement on the company’s website, attributing the outage to “a flaw discovered in a content update for Falcon for Windows hosts.” Falcon is a cybersecurity software product from CrowdStrike, a large cloud-based cybersecurity company based in Texas.

When asked about the use of CrowdStrike software by the Palau National Communications Corporation (PNCC), Public Information Officer Hefflin Bai confirmed that the CrowdStrike program was indeed used on PNCC servers. However, Bai stressed that the IT team took precautions after being notified of the problem to ensure that there would be no impact on Palau.

This was further confirmed by a public statement released by PNCC on its Facebook page last Saturday, which emphasized the proactive approach of the IT team, “implementing corrective actions starting yesterday and continuing today to ensure uninterrupted service to Palau’s customers.”

Bruce Ngirmidol, an avid Windows and Internet user in Palau, said he encountered no technical glitches over the weekend. An IT specialist at the Ministry of Finance confirmed that the distribution of services within the ministry was not affected.

The global technical outage severely affected banks, hospitals and airlines, sparking concerns around the world. Director Peter Polloi clarified that Palau’s airport operations were largely unaffected. Although a United Airlines flight scheduled to fly to Manila on Friday evening was delayed, all other flights were operating according to normal schedules. Polloi confirmed that no other airlines flying to Palau were affected.

About eight hours after the initial incident, CrowdStrike and Microsoft found a joint solution for the issue. Notably, the buggy update did not affect Mac and Linux systems.

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