House Republicans are calling on CrowdStrike’s CEO to testify at a congressional hearing on the global technology outage that affected flights and businesses around the world on Friday.
Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.) and Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.) I sent a letter On Monday, it called on CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz to appear before the committee for public testimony about the global outages.
“Recognizing that the American people will undoubtedly feel lasting, real-world impacts from this incident, they have a right to know the details of how this incident occurred and what mitigation measures CrowdStrike is taking,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter.
The outage was blamed on a “flaw” in CrowdStrike’s software update, but the company later said it was not the result of a cybersecurity attack.
The outage caused thousands of flights to be cancelled or delayed over the weekend. Hospitals, emergency services and some government offices were also affected.
“The gravity of this incident cannot be ignored,” wrote Greene, the House Homeland Security Committee’s chair, and Garbarino, the House Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection Subcommittee’s chair.
“But this incident should serve as a broader warning about the national security risks associated with our network dependency — malicious cyber actors backed by nation-states such as China and Russia will be closely watching our response to this incident,” the lawmakers wrote.
They asked CrowdStrike to schedule a hearing with the committee by 5pm on Wednesday.
A CrowdStrike spokesman said the company was in contact with the congressional committees.
“Crowdstrike is actively in contact with relevant congressional committees, and a timeline for briefings or other engagement may be made public at the discretion of lawmakers,” the spokesperson said.
