How the CrowdStrike global IT outage affected a Canadian business

A global technology outage linked to a faulty software update affecting Microsoft products has had a ripple effect on a Canadian business.

Nancy Haslam, owner of Maximum Signs in Pontypool, Ont., which creates highway and traffic signs, says the outage prevented employees at her business from receiving their pay.

She said she processed payroll Thursday and found out Friday morning that the funds hadn’t been deposited into their bank accounts.

“Now they’re still waiting for the money to show up into their account,” Haslam said in a phone interview with CTVNews.ca on Friday morning. “I’m hoping that surely it will be fixed, so we are kind of holding our breath at this point.”

She said she’s keeping up to date on developments in the news so she hasn’t contacted anyone to try to resolve the problem.

“It’s an inconvenience for sure and hopefully it doesn’t carry on too long,” Haslam said. “There’s really nothing much we can do. You can hold your breath and hope it can work itself out sooner rather than later.”

The widespread outage disrupted services and companies around the world Friday, including grounding flights and knocking banking and hospital systems offline.

A fix is incoming and the outage was not related to a security incident or cyberattack, said cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike. The disruptions worsened hours after the problem occurred.

CrowdStrike said in an emailed statement to The Associated Press that the company “is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts.”

With files from The Associated Press