The largest IT outage in history is expected to be a minor setback to the economy

Many companies are expected to report financial losses from the event, but it is too early to tell what the final tally will be. Stocks fell on Friday, with all three major indexes down nearly 1 percent. CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity company in the middle of the meltdown, took a big hit, plunging more than 11 percent and shaving billions of dollars off the company’s value.

Still, experts say the incident is unlikely to have obvious economic ripples, at least not yet — a day’s worth of grounded flights, canceled surgeries and inaccessible bank accounts aren’t enough to derail the country’s robust growth. But they warned that the outage caused by CrowdStrike’s botched software update exposed the precariousness of an economy built on some interconnected technology systems.

„It’s global capitalism at work, it’s the fundamental economic consequence of the Internet we’ve created,” said Bruce Schneier, a security technologist and fellow at Harvard University’s Bergman Klein Center for Internet and Society. „We have a very fragile system where companies are rewarded for maximizing profits. How do you do that? With monopolies, without inefficiencies, with lean running — and the thing about that is, as long as it works, it’s great. But when it fails, it fails badly.”

The shock to the global economy comes as many industries recover from years of pandemic-related disruptions that have disrupted supply chains and led to widespread shortages and soaring prices.

This week’s crash brings into focus „what we already worry about”: a world and the global economy becoming vulnerable to supply shocks, said Diane Swank, chief economist at KPMG.

„It creates a world that is very susceptible to inflation,” he added. „We’ve seen it in extremes — and we’ve fixed it — in epidemics.”

And immediately, as payment systems crashed across the country, customers reported cash-only purchases at grocery stores, gas stations and more. Even zoos.

An employee at Rojo Car Wash in Norwood, Mass., said its credit card systems were down all day Friday, resulting in lost revenue. „Cars see the 'cash only’ sign and they drive past,” he said. „It’s been going like that all day.”

However, while the incident raises concerns across the economy, experts say it is unlikely to leave a visible mark on a strong economy marked by a strong job market and solid growth.

It doesn’t matter Decisions by the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates or alter the economic platforms of GOP and Democratic candidates. But it underscores risks from outside the financial world that can quickly ripple through large industries and small businesses.

„We’ve built a decentralized Internet to withstand a nuclear war, but what we’re seeing now is a single point of failure felt around the world,” said cyber security professor Tyler Moore. University of Tulsa. „We can deal with the consequences of this for a long time, and if it continues the drag on the economy will be significant.”

Speaking on „60 Minutes” in February, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome H. Powell said the job of protecting and protecting financial institutions is never done. He has often cited a major cyber threat as one of the things he worries about, or one that could suddenly undermine the central bank’s work.

„Attackers are always improving their game and defenders have to improve their game all the time,” Powell said. „You have to keep investing and either catch up or move on. It never stops. There’s never a moment where you take a breath and think, 'Yeah, we’ve got this.’

The central bank has a broad role in overseeing and regulating the U.S. financial system, and on Friday morning, a spokeswoman said „critical” Federal Reserve systems were operating normally and the central bank was cooperating. „Affected Institutions and other Government Institutions” to assess the situation.

Even among the central bank’s peers, the effects of the shutdown were less pronounced. Norway’s central bank said it has resolved some of the technical problems that affected liquidity operations, BNN Bloomberg reported.

The New York Stock Exchange also performed normally, although markets were glowing red at the end of a week of losses.

Jeremy Kress, a bank regulatory expert at the University of Michigan, said the banking system is under control. But the sudden meltdown is a reminder of the dangers of online failures. Kress pointed to a push among some regulators to increase the amount of capital banks must hold on hand for cyber breaches.

Others in the industry said protecting the nation’s financial system from cyberattacks and other technological outages has become a top priority in recent years. This week’s meltdown reinforces the need to prepare not just for the worst attacks, but for run-of-the-mill technology updates and other protocols, they said.

„Over the years, the question has been, what if we fail?” said Jason Healy, a senior research scholar at Columbia University who focuses on cyber conflict studies. „If we’re all sharing the same software, if one thing goes down, we’re all going to suffer. That’s what we’re seeing here, and we have to be prepared so that these situations don’t drive us off a cliff.”

Speaking on CNBC Friday morning, Rohit Chopra, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said there were no major issues with critical fees or banking services. But he said the country is „getting a taste” of what happens when the financial sector and other key industries rely heavily on a few cloud and technology companies. Chopra pointed out that ransomware attacks have affected healthcare companies, auto dealers and others over the past few months.

„It’s a situation that can really create problems throughout the economy,” he said. „I’m very confident that what we’re seeing today is more trouble than chaos. But we’re certainly savoring it.