Shares of the American company Crowdstrike declined at the beginning of early trading today, Friday, by 21%, meaning that about a quarter of its market value evaporated within a few minutes of the start of trading. The sharp decline in CrowdStrike shares came in the wake of the technical glitch that struck the world on Friday morning and caused a series of technical problems that led to the suspension of the services of some airlines, banks, stock exchanges and television channels. This defect was found to be the result of an update carried out by the Crowd Strike platform, which led to a crash in the Windows operating system owned by Microsoft. Microsoft shares also fell, as did shares of travel and entertainment companies, as investors assessed the potential disruption for vacationers. Crowdstrike is not widely known because it is a security company that provides its services to large companies and not individuals. It is an American company headquartered in Austin, Texas, listed on the American Stock Ex change, and appears in both the Standard and Poor's 500 and the Nasdaq high-tech indexes. Like many modern technology companies, it has not been around for long, as Crowdstrike was founded only 13 years ago, but it has grown to employ approximately 8,500 people now. As a cybersecurity service provider, they tend to be called upon to deal with the effects of hacking attacks. It has participated in investigations into many prominent cyberattacks in the United States and the world. In its latest earnings report, the company announced nearly 24,000 customers, and each of these customers represents a large organization in its own right, so it is difficult to estimate the number of individual computers affected by the current global technical disruption crisis. Source: National Iraqi News Agency