A massive global technology outage today grounded airlines, distrupt services in some airports, medical services, TV broadcasts, banks, retail businesses and hundreds of other business and services around the world.
The outage was linked to CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm whose software is widely used across various industries to guard against hackers and security breaches. An update issued by CrowdStrike seemed to be the cause, leading to crashes on machines operating with the Microsoft Windows system.
According to first reports three major U.S. airlines, American, United and Delta, grounded all flights. Turkish Airlines said that they are currently experiencing problems with ticketing, check-in, and reservation processes.Ryanair advises all passengers to arrive at the airport at least 3 hours before their scheduled departure time due to the current tech outage.
The issues were also being felt at airports around the world, including Hong Kong International Airport, Sydney Airport, Berlin Brandenburg Airport, Istanbul Airport, and Dubai International Airport.
In Britain, the National Health Service was experiencing a loss of access to its computer systems across a number of hospitals and doctors offices, many of which rely on the same internal IT system.
Television broadcasters were not spared either. Major French networks TF1 and Canal+ reported being unable to go on air due to the breakdown. Sky News also appears to have been hit by the outage. The UK news channel has been showing archive footage and briefly displaying an error message.
The London Stock Exchange’s website is also experiencing issues. Some retailers have problems with card payments.
Representatives for CrowdStrike did not respond to a request for comment on Friday. Microsoft declined to comment.
