Banks, airlines, TV networks and health care systems around the world that rely on Microsoft 365 applications were hit by widespread outages early Friday linked to CrowdStrike. Thousands of flights and train services were canceled worldwide, including more than 1,800 in the United States, and there were disruptions to many other public and retail services.
Here’s what we know about the outages:
What is the reason for the global Microsoft service outage?
The problem was caused by a technical issue faced by the global cybersecurity company. Crowd Strike It said it had identified the issue in its software and was working to fix it. CrowdStrike is providing antivirus software to Microsoft for its Windows devices.
“Earlier today, a CrowdStrike update was responsible for taking down a number of IT systems globally,” Microsoft said in a statement to CBS News.
Later on Friday, Microsoft announced He said on social media “We have completed our mitigation actions and our telemetry data indicates that all previously impacted Microsoft 365 applications and services have recovered. We are entering a monitoring period to ensure the impact is fully resolved.”
In a statement, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said the issue had been identified and a fix was being implemented. “This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated, and a fix has been deployed,” he added.
Ezra Akayan/Getty Images
In an update shared Friday afternoon, On social mediaKurz again apologized to those affected and said he was committed to “providing full transparency about how this happened and the steps we are taking to prevent anything like this from happening again.”
What is affected by the Microsoft service outage?
More than 3000 Flights have been cancelled. within the United States, within or out of the country, as of Friday evening, and more than 11,400 other flights were delayed, according to a flight tracking service. Flight AwareWorldwide, more than 42,000 flights were delayed on Friday.
American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines resumed at least some of their departing flights later Friday morning after operations were halted earlier in the day due to outages.
“We have restored our operations today and expect to provide reliable operation to our customers tomorrow,” American Airlines said in a statement late Friday.
“While we have had to cancel and delay more flights than we would like, we are prepared to return to near-normal operation on Saturday,” United Airlines Chief Operating Officer Toby Enqvist said in a statement late Friday.
A video released by the Federal Aviation Administration showed flights resuming Friday afternoon.
Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston canceled all previously scheduled surgeries and medical visits that were not deemed urgent because several computer systems were down, preventing access to vital digital records.
“We do everything on our computers now… people’s medical history, their allergies. So when that happens, we have to go back to a paper chart,” Megan Mahoney, a nurse in the neuro-intensive care unit, told CBS News.
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City has postponed all procedures requiring anesthesia. Emory Health System in Atlanta has postponed some types of surgeries. Seattle Children’s Hospital has closed its outpatient clinics.
The Department of Health and Human Services said Friday afternoon that it was “assessing the impact of the CrowdStrike outage on patient care, HHS systems, services and operations.”
“DHS systems are currently experiencing a global outage of the CrowdStrike cybersecurity program,” a memo to employees from the Department of Homeland Security obtained by CBS News said. “This is impacting many companies globally, as you may have seen in the news. This was not a cyberattack.”
Portland, Oregon Mayor Ted Wheeler issued a state of emergency declaration for the city on Friday. The declaration will allow for “immediate response and resources to restore city systems to full operational levels.” New York CityNew York City Mayor Eric Adams said the outage did not have a major impact on city operations because of previous training exercises conducted to educate officials on how to respond to an IT problem.
The FAA is working closely with airlines affected by a global IT issue. This time-lapse video shows air traffic recovering after airlines requested FAA assistance with grounding this morning. Contact your airline for more information and monitoring https://t.co/smgdqJN3td. pic.twitter.com/inRTK6ovTI
— Federal Aviation Administration ✈️ (@FAANews) July 19, 2024
In Europe, Lufthansa, KLM and SAS reported flight disruptions. CBS News partner BBC News reported that Switzerland’s largest airport reported that planes were not allowed to land. In India, at the country’s main airport in Delhi, everything was done manually. Electric check-in stations were not working and gate information was being updated manually on a whiteboard, the BBC reported.
Hospitals in Germany said they were cancelling elective surgeries on Friday, doctors in the UK said they were having problems accessing the online booking system, and pharmacists in the UK said there were disruptions to medicine deliveries and access to prescriptions.
Ping Guan/Reuters
The FBI said there were no operational issues associated with the outage, though some of its systems were affected. Those systems have backup methods that allow them to be used even in the event of an outage.
The London Stock Exchange said it had experienced regulatory outages, but trading was unaffected. A New York Stock Exchange spokesman said markets were fully operational and expected to reopen normally.
Starbucks said the outage was Block clients By using mobile ordering features. Delivery companies such as FedEx have also reported that Some packages may be delayed. Due to interruptions.
“FedEx has activated contingency plans to mitigate the impact of a global IT outage at a third-party software vendor. However, potential delays in package delivery are possible under a commitment dated July 19, 2024,” the company said in a statement.
When will the Microsoft service outage be fixed?
Even with the fix implemented by CrowdStrike, some of the issues it caused will likely take some time to resolve, Omer Grossman, chief information officer at identity security firm CyberArk, told Reuters. That’s because the issue is with Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) products running on individual client computers, he said.
“It turns out that the endpoints that went down — the blue screen of death — cannot be updated remotely and the problem has to be resolved manually, endpoint by endpoint. This process is expected to take days,” Grossman said.
In an interview with CNBC, CrowdStrike’s Kurtz said many affected systems have already begun to recover, and for some customers the fix may be as simple as rebooting their computers or servers.
However, he acknowledged that “some systems may not fully recover, and we are working individually with each customer to ensure we can get them up and running.”
Kurtz did not provide a timeframe, and it appears that many companies and organizations around the world will have to rely on their own technology departments to get systems back up and running.
— Chris Van Cleave contributed to this report.
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