Beijing, China – Following the recent CrowdStrike incident on Friday, Gartner’s senior research director, Gao Feng, reassured that the impact on China was minimal, mainly affecting foreign companies operating within the country. Feng noted that local Chinese companies typically do not utilize CrowdStrike products, resulting in the limited impact seen in domestic public life.

On the day of the incident, essential services in China such as ride-hailing and e-commerce platforms continued to operate smoothly without disruptions. State media confirmed that international flights at Beijing’s airports were running as usual, with major airlines like Air China, China Eastern Airlines, and China Southern Airlines unaffected by any significant technical system failures.

The most notable repercussions in China from the IT outage were observed in Microsoft Windows devices attempting to integrate an update of CrowdStrike’s Falcon product. This led to a series of computer restarts and a “blue screen of death” for some users. Microsoft products maintain a high market share in China, with Windows dominating personal computer shipments in the mainland.

While the hashtag “Thank you Microsoft, [I can] take off early” briefly trended on Chinese social media Weibo during the outages, the focus soon shifted to other domestic matters, including the launch of Xiaomi’s new product in Beijing. It was noted that Microsoft products such as Office 365 and Azure cloud are operated in China by a local company known as 21Vianet.

Amidst growing concerns over cybersecurity, both the U.S. and Chinese governments have been urging domestic companies to rely on homegrown technology and store data locally to address national security issues. However, despite the global nature of cyber threats, CrowdStrike’s limited usage in China contributed to the minimal impact seen during the recent incident.

Chinese-made Unity Operating System (UOS) has been gaining traction among state-owned enterprises and government sectors in China, although Windows remains the dominant player in the domestic personal computer market. AppInChina’s CEO, Rich Bishop, highlighted that the lack of CrowdStrike usage in China can be attributed to the preference for cybersecurity products from local companies like Tencent and 360.

CrowdStrike’s annual cyber threat report underlined the continuous operations of “China-nexus adversaries” on a global scale, emphasizing the importance of cybersecurity measures in an interconnected world. The incident shed light on the differences in cybersecurity approaches between countries and the impact of localization on minimizing disruptions during such cybersecurity incidents.