CrowdStrike is a cyber security firm that is mainly used by medium to large companies to protect them from cyber attacks. Except, this time, the system brought down its own clients in an act of “friendly fire.”

Like many computer system software like Microsoft Office or Epson printers, CrowdStrike send consumers regular updates. This one went wrong. It not only affected radio stations but also airline check-in systems, online banking and restaurant billings and much more.

So far as radio systems were concerned, the outage didn’t necessarily take them off air but it affected much of their automated playout software responsible for playing music and pre-recorded content such as interviews, commercials and other segments.

At 2GB, for example, Drive announcer Chris O’Keefe (main pic) was forced to talk for almost three hours non-stop because he didn’t have any commercial breaks or other pre-recorded content to give him a break. He was, however able to take live phone calls.

More to come