Global IT Outage Disrupts Businesses Across Multiple Sectors

On Friday, a global IT outage disrupted a wide range of services and operations across various industries, including airlines, financial services, and media groups.

Thousands of employees were unable to access their computers, causing significant disruptions in sectors from finance to healthcare.

Australian businesses were among the first to report issues, with retailers like Woolworths and 7-Eleven affected. Sydney Airport confirmed that “a global technical outage” impacted its operations.

In Europe, airlines and airports also warned of disruptions.

In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration reported that Delta, United, and American Airlines had requested to ground departing flights.

Multiple social media posts attributed the outage to an update to security software from the US company CrowdStrike, which caused a problem with Microsoft’s Windows operating system.

A statement shared on social media and posted on CrowdStrike’s business customer site stated: “CrowdStrike is aware of reports of crashes on Windows.”

Berlin Brandenburg Airport reported being affected by “a technical fault,” resulting in passenger delays during check-in.

Aena, the primary airport operator in Spain, stated that “operations are being carried out using manual systems” due to an IT system “incident.” The disruptions in Aena’s systems and Spain’s airport network could cause delays. They are working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.

The London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) announced that it was investigating an issue with the publication of news announcements. According to a statement on the company’s website, its news service faced a “third-party global technical issue, which prevented news from being published.” LSEG confirmed that other systems, including the exchange, were functioning normally.

Earlier on Friday, Microsoft reported that some Azure cloud computing customers “may experience issues with multiple Azure services in the central US region” and that it was investigating the problems.

A status update later in the morning indicated that the company had “determined the underlying cause,” which was not a cyberattack but a technical problem, and that “the majority of services are now recovered.”

Despite this, broader outages persisted, with some users unable to access various Microsoft 365 suite apps and services, including Teams video conferencing tool.

Microsoft emphasized that it was addressing the issue with “the highest priority and urgency” but warned that users would experience “gradual relief” as they worked to resolve the problems, which appeared linked to the same Azure issue.

David Rhodes, executive chair of Sky News, announced on X that the broadcaster had “not been able to broadcast live TV this morning” and apologized to viewers for the interruption.

CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity company critical of Microsoft’s handling of recent attacks, launched a product this year designed to work alongside Microsoft’s antivirus tool, Defender. Adam Meyers, CrowdStrike’s senior vice president of counter adversary operations, mentioned in May that the demand for the product had been “incredible,” with businesses eager to “shore up this Microsoft [security] problem.” Meyers criticized Microsoft for repeatedly failing in this area.