NEW YORK – A US House committee called on the chief executive officer of CrowdStrike Holdings to testify on a defective software update that caused widespread global outages.

The House Committee on Homeland Security requested the appearance of CEO George Kurtz, and it asked CrowdStrike to promptly schedule a date.

“In less than one day, we have seen major impacts to key functions of the global economy, including aviation, health care, banking, media and emergency services,” committee chair and Tennessee Republican Mark Green, as well as representative Andrew Garbarino, a New York Republican and chairman of the panel’s sub-committee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection, wrote in a letter to Mr Kurtz on July 22. 

“Recognising that Americans will undoubtedly feel the lasting, real-world consequences of this incident, they deserve to know in detail how this incident happened and the mitigation steps CrowdStrike is taking,” they wrote.

CrowdStrike did not immediately respond to the letter. Congressional committees have the power to compel testimony by issuing subpoenas but usually first ask potential witnesses to appear voluntarily.

Other congressional committees have asked company officials for briefings on the outage, its causes and CrowdStrike’s response.

Last week’s outage was blamed on a defect in a software update and impacted CrowdStrike customers using Microsoft Windows. The impact of the outage rippled across the globe and disrupted healthcare systems, airlines, ports, companies and governments. BLOOMBERG