The Microsoft IT Outage that impacted services worldwide on Friday was caused by a software update by third-party cybersecurity technology company CrowdStrike. According to Microsoft, the outage—which continues to cause disruption—affected 8.5 million Windows devices. Though they note that this is less than one percent of all Windows machines, the outage crashed systems worldwide, with online banking portals and air travel among the services impacted. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The outage was not caused by a cyberattack, but concern has since grown from both CrowdStrike and government-affiliated agencies as to how scammers are capitalizing on the outage and the resulting confusion surrounding malicious cyber activity. America’s Cyber Defense Agency, the U.K.’s National Cyber Security Centre, and Australia’s National Anti-Scam Centre are among the organizations to issue warnings for consumers to be wary of scams at this time. Read More: CrowdStrike’s Role In the Microsoft IT Outage, Explained According to CrowdStrike’s blog, a “likely eCrime actor is using file names capitalizing on July 19, 2024,” specifically utilizing a malicious ZIP archive named “crowdstrike-hotfix.zip” to take data from customers. Here is how you can protect yourself from scammers as disruptions from the outage continue to unfold. Be alert You’ve already begun this first step.