SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has announced that his companies have ceased using the web/cloud-based antivirus platform CrowdStrike following a global Windows 10 outage on Friday.

The cybersecurity firm admitted that the massive disruptions were caused by a recent update that conflicted with Microsoft systems.

The outage affected Windows 10 users worldwide, impacting airports, banks, and broadcasters. Aviation analytics firm Cirium reported that at least 4,295 flights were grounded globally due to the outage.

Media outlets such as the UK-based Sky News and several Australian broadcasters, including ABC, SBS, Channel 7, Channel 9, and News Corp Australia, were also affected, with some going off the air temporarily.

In response to a post on X, Musk wrote, "We just deleted Crowdstrike from all our systems."

Satya Nadella, the executive chairman and CEO of Microsoft, confirmed on X that a CrowdStrike update was responsible for Friday's outage.

He added that Microsoft was providing customers with "technical guidance and support to safely bring their systems back online."

Musk responded to Nadella's statement, commenting, "This gave a seizure to the automotive supply chain."

Commenting on a Financial Times report about the global Windows 10 outage, the US-based billionaire described the event as the "biggest IT fail ever."

Musk also agreed with Christopher Stanley, the head of security engineering at X and a principal security engineer at SpaceX, who described Friday's events as a "wake-up reminder that you shouldn't have an internet-connected privileged binary running on your production systems."

"What was a bad update could have easily been a massive adversary backdoor. A third-party vendor will always be the weakest link," Stanley warned.

Speaking to NBC on Friday, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz expressed regret for the disruption caused by the outage. "We're deeply sorry for the impact that we've caused to customers, to travelers, to anyone affected," Kurtz said.

"We've identified it very quickly… The systems come back online as they are rebooted," he added, noting that CrowdStrike is working with its customers to help them return to normal operations.