Much of the world faced online disarray Friday as a widespread technology outage affected companies and services across industries — grounding flights, knocking banks and hospital systems offline and media outlets off air. Just before noon 213 flights have been cancelled at O’hare and 11 at Midway. Delays are O’hare close to 40 minutes and under 15 minutes at Midway. Long lines are being reported along with mounting baggage.

At the heart of the massive disruption is CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm that says the problem occurred when it deployed a faulty update to computers running Microsoft Windows — with the company noting that the issue was not a security incident or cyberattack. Scores of companies rely on CrowdStrike for their security needs. That makes the consequences of a faulty update, like the one CrowdStrike cited Friday, all the more far-reaching.