A number of global organizations — including major banks, media outlets and airlines — have reported experiencing a massive IT outage.
The US state of Alaska warned that its emergency services could be affected, while there were also reports that the London Stock Exchange was affected.
Australia was particularly affected by flight grounding, chaos at supermarket checkouts, and disruption to on-air broadcast networks due to outages of teleprompters, graphics and computers.
The cause of the outage is not yet clear, but many affected people have linked it to Microsoft’s PC operating systems.
“We are investigating an issue affecting users’ ability to access various Microsoft 365 apps and services,” said an official Microsoft 365 update posted on X earlier today.
But a Microsoft spokesperson told the BBC on Friday afternoon that “the majority of services had been restored earlier” in the day.
A spokesman for Australia’s home affairs minister said the outage appeared to be linked to a problem at global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, and the country’s cybersecurity watchdog said there was no information to suggest it was an attack.
“Our current information is that this outage is related to a technical issue with a third-party software platform used by the affected businesses,” the company said in a statement.
Reuters news agency quoted sources as saying that the London Stock Exchange suffered a power outage, while officials in Alaska said that many 911 and non-emergency call centers were not working properly.
Meanwhile, information disappeared from departure boards at Sydney Airport. In an announcement to passengers at the domestic terminal, budget airline Jetstar said a “Microsoft issue” had left it unable to check in passengers or board its flights.
Virgin Australia also told its passengers that there was a “complete grounding” of flights.
Social media users reported long queues outside Australian stores such as Woolworths, with payment systems down, and telecoms company Telstra also reported problems.
The company, the nation’s largest provider, said calls to its emergency services call centers were not affected, but it was working with state emergency services that may have been affected to implement backup operations.
Have you been affected by an IT outage? Please share your experiences.
