By: Olkeriil Eoghan Ngirudelsang
Palau remained unaffected by the widespread tech outage that impacted numerous countries last Friday. The disruption stemmed from a faulty update deployed by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike to computers running Microsoft Windows.
CrowdStrike CEO acknowledged the issue in a statement on the company’s website, attributing the outage to “a defect found in a Falcon content update for Windows hosts.” Falcon is a cybersecurity software product offered by CrowdStrike, a major cloud-based cybersecurity company headquartered in Texas.
Public Information Officer Hefflin Bai, upon inquiry regarding CrowdStrike software usage by Palau National Communications Corporation (PNCC), confirmed the use of a CrowdStrike program on PNCC servers. However, Bai emphasized that the IT team took precautionary measures upon notification of the issue, ensuring no impact on Palau.
A public statement released by PNCC on their Facebook page last Saturday further corroborated this. The statement highlighted the IT team’s proactive approach, implementing corrective measures “since yesterday and continuing through today to ensure the uninterrupted delivery of services to our customers in Palau.”
Bruce Ngirmidol, an avid Windows and internet user in Palau, reported no experience of a tech outage over the weekend. An IT specialist from the Ministry of Finance confirmed the service distribution remained unaffected within the ministry.
The global tech malfunction significantly impacted banks, hospitals, and airlines, raising concerns worldwide. Director Peter Polloi clarified that Palau’s airport operations remained largely unaffected. While a United Airlines flight scheduled for Manila on Friday evening experienced delays, all other flights operated on their normal schedules. Polloi confirmed that no other airlines serving Palau were impacted.
A joint solution to the issue was identified by CrowdStrike and Microsoft approximately eight hours after the initial incident. Notably, the faulty update did not affect Mac and Linux systems.