On Friday, widespread outages hit banks, airlines, television networks, and health systems worldwide that relied on Microsoft 365 apps, linked to the company CrowdStrike. The issue stemmed from a technical problem in CrowdStrike’s software used by Microsoft for its Windows devices. Thousands of flights and train services were canceled globally, impacting public and retail services. CrowdStrike and Microsoft worked to resolve the issue, with Microsoft confirming recovery of impacted services. CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz stated it was not a security incident but an identified technical issue.
The outages affected over 3,000 flights in the U.S. and thousands globally, with airlines like American, Delta, and United later resuming operations. Hospitals like Brigham and Women’s canceled surgeries, while the Department of Health and Human Services assessed the impact on patient care. The FAA assisted airlines, and European carriers like Lufthansa experienced disruptions. The U.K. faced issues with online bookings, medicine deliveries, and prescriptions.
Businesses like Starbucks and FedEx reported difficulties, with FedEx activating contingency plans to manage delivery delays. The London and New York Stock Exchanges were impacted but continued operations. CrowdStrike’s fix required individual endpoint manual solutions, leading to potential delays in resolving all issues. CrowdStrike worked on individual fixes with affected clients but did not provide a timeline for full recovery, indicating organizations would rely on their own technology departments to restore operations. Mayor Ted Wheeler of Portland issued an emergency declaration, while New York City Mayor Eric Adams noted minimal impact due to prior drills on handling IT issues.
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