WASHINGTON, Sept 24 (Reuters) - A senior executive at

cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike ( CRWD ) apologized at an

appearance before a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee

on Tuesday for a faulty software update that caused a global IT

outage in July.

Adam Meyers, senior vice president for counter adversary

operations at CrowdStrike ( CRWD ), told the House Homeland Security

Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection subcommittee that

CrowdStrike ( CRWD ) released a content configuration update for its

Falcon Sensor security software that resulted in system crashes

worldwide.

"We are deeply sorry this happened and we are determined to

prevent this from happening again," Meyers said. "We have

undertaken a full review of our systems and begun implementing

plans to bolster our content update procedures so that we emerge

from this experience as a stronger company."

He said the issues was not the result of a cyberattack or

prompted by AI.

The July 19 incident led to worldwide flight cancellations

and impacted industries around the globe including banks, health

care, media companies and hotel chains. The outage disrupted

internet services, affecting 8.5 million Microsoft

Windows devices.

"We cannot allow a mistake of this magnitude to happen

again," said Representative Mark Green, who chairs the House

Homeland Security Committee calling the events "a catastrophe

that we would expect to see in a movie."

Meyers said that on July 19 new threat detection

configurations were validated and sent to sensors running on

Microsoft Windows devices but the "configurations were not

understood by the Falcon sensor's rules engine, leading affected

sensors to malfunction until the problematic configurations were

replaced."

Delta Air Lines ( DAL ) has vowed to take legal action,

saying the outage forced it to cancel 7,000 flights, impacting

1.3 million passengers over five days, and cost it $500 million.

CrowdStrike ( CRWD ) rejected Delta's contention that it should be blamed

for massive flight disruptions.

Last month, CrowdStrike ( CRWD ) cut its revenue and profit forecasts

in the aftermath of the faulty software update, and said the

environment would remain challenging for about a year.