NEW YORK — A faulty software update caused technological havoc worldwide on Friday, grounding flights, knocking down some financial companies and news outlets, and disrupting hospitals, small businesses and government offices.

The breadth of the outages highlighted the fragility of a digitized world dependent on just a few providers for key computing services.

The trouble was sparked by an update issued by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike and only affected its customers running Microsoft Windows, the world’s most popular operating system for personal computers. It was not the result of hacking or a cyberattack, according to CrowdStrike, which apologized and said a fix was on the way.

Businesses and governments worldwide experienced hours-long disruptions — their computer monitors glowing blue with error messages — and they scrambled to deal with the fallout. CrowdStrike’s CEO said some of their systems will require time-consuming manual fixes.

Thousands of flights were canceled and tens of thousands were delayed, leading to long lines at airports in the U.S., Europe and Asia. Airlines lost access to check-in and booking services in the heart of the summer travel season.

Several local TV stations in the U.S. were prevented from airing the news early Friday, and some state and local governments reported problems at courts, motor vehicle departments, unemployment agencies, emergency call centers and other offices.

Affected hospitals had problems with appointment systems, forcing them to suspend patient visits and cancel some surgeries.

American Express said it temporarily had some difficulties processing transactions, while TD Bank responded to online complaints by saying it was working to “restore” customers’ ability to access their accounts.

Elsewhere, people experienced minor inconveniences, including trouble ordering ahead at Starbucks, causing long lines to form at some of the coffee chain’s stores.

In New York City’s Times Square, right before 12:30 a.m., the blue “recovery” screens popping up on laptops appeared on several giant electronic billboards. A few were dark Friday afternoon.

Reminder of our vulnerability

Cyber expert James Bore said real harm would be caused. “All of these systems are running the same software,” Bore said. “We’ve made all of these tools so widespread that when things inevitably go wrong — and they will, as we’ve seen — they go wrong at a huge scale.”

The head of Germany’s IT security agency, Claudia Plattner, said “we can’t expect a very quick solution.” A forecast for when exactly all systems will be up and running is difficult, but “it won’t be hours,” she added.

CrowdStrike said in a recording on its customer service line that the problem was related to “the Falcon sensor,” referring to one of its products used to block online attacks. The company says it has 29,000 customers.

In an interview on NBC’s “Today Show,” CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz apologized, saying the company was “deeply sorry for the impact that we’ve caused to customers, to travelers, to anyone affected by this, including our companies.”

“We know what the issue is” and are working to fix it, Kurtz said. However, he noted it could take “some time” for certain customers, especially those lacking in-house expertise.

While CrowdStrike’s update was automated, the fix requires hands-on work such as deleting corrupted files, which could take some customers days or longer, said Forrester analyst Allie Mellen.

“Given that CrowdStrike has a ton of customers, a ton of Fortune 500 customers, and they have likely millions of (computers) under management, this causes a bigger issue,” Mellen said. “It is going to be a long and arduous process.”

Though the outage’s impact could be felt far and wide, the forecasting firm Capital Economics said it was likely to have little impact on the world economy.

Cybersecurity experts said those affected by the outage also needed to be wary of bad actors reaching out claiming they can help. “Attackers will definitely prey on organizations as a result of this,” said Gartner analyst Eric Grenier.