On Friday, a global tech outage wreaked havoc across multiple industries, causing widespread disruptions. Airlines halted flights, broadcasters went off the air, and services from banking to healthcare faced system problems.
Major U.S. airlines, including American Airlines, Delta Airlines, and United Airlines, grounded flights. Airports worldwide reported delays and disruptions, with some airlines manually checking in passengers due to system failures. This caused significant delays but, fortunately, no flight cancellations.
Banks and financial services from Australia to India and Germany experienced disruptions, leaving customers unable to access their accounts or perform transactions. The outage emphasized the financial sector’s dependency on real-time data and online services.
In Britain, booking systems used by doctors were offline. Medical officials reported on X (formerly Twitter) that the outage affected their ability to schedule and manage patient appointments, adding strain to the healthcare system.
Sky News, a major UK broadcaster, went off air, apologizing for being unable to transmit live. This left many viewers without access to real-time news. Additionally, Manchester United postponed a scheduled ticket release due to the outage.
Former head of Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre, Ciaran Martin, indicated that an update to a product from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike seemed to be the root cause. The update impacted operating systems based on Microsoft’s Windows, causing devices to crash and display the infamous “Blue Screen of Death.”Microsoft’s Azure cloud unit acknowledged the issue, stating it affected virtual machines running Windows OS and the CrowdStrike Falcon agent. They assured that a resolution was forthcoming. CrowdStrike sent an alert to clients providing a manual workaround to fix the problem.
Analysts called it one of the biggest outages ever, emphasizing the importance of robust IT security tools. Ajay Unni, CEO of StickmanCyber, highlighted the disaster of an IT security tool causing a global outage. While some companies began restoring services, the full recovery process remained. Microsoft’s spokesperson noted that most services were recovered earlier in the day, and Australian authorities confirmed the issue was due to a technical problem, not a cyber attack.