Global IT outage grounds aviation, media, financial services

Airlines’ operations in countries like Singapore, the United States and Australia have been disrupted due to a major global cyber outage affecting services.

The massive information technology (IT) outage, which began in the early hours of Friday (today), also affected banks and media outlets.

According to international media, several airports and airlines have reported issues with their IT systems, as the outages spread.

Flights are said to be grounded at Sydney airport, United Airlines has stopped flying, while the London Stock Exchange Group’s platform is reportedly experiencing interruptions.

In Germany, the Berlin airport reported issues with its IT systems, adding that delays experienced with check-ins “are due to a technical fault”.

The Sky News channel is also off-air due to the outages.

The disruption has been linked to a downtime experienced with Microsoft internet services and issues with Cloudstrike, a cybersecurity software firm.

David Rhodes, Sky News executive chairman, said the channel has not been able to broadcast live this morning.

“SkyNews have not been able to broadcast live TV this morning, currently telling viewers that we apologise for the interruption,” Rhodes posted on X.

“Much of our news report is still available online, and we are working hard to restore all services.”

Rail transportation was also impacted as UK firm, Govia Thameslink Railway, reported delays.

“We are currently experiencing widespread IT issues across our entire network,” the service said on social media.

“Our IT teams are actively investigating to determine the root cause of the problem.

“We are unable to access driver diagrams at certain locations, leading to potential short-notice cancellations, particularly on the Thameslink and Great Northern networks.

“Additionally, other key systems, including our real-time customer information platforms, are also affected.

“We will provide additional updates when we can. In the meantime, please regularly check your journey before you travel.”

In addition, Telstra Group, a telecommunications firm in Australia, reported service disruptions on its X account on Friday.

“Global issues affecting CrowdStrike and Microsoft are disrupting some of our systems. The issue is causing some hold ups for some of our customers and we thank you for your patience,” Telstra Group said.

‘A CONFIGURATION CHANGE CAUSED INTERRUPTION’

Microsoft, in a statement, said a configuration change in a portion of “our Azure backend workloads, caused interruption between storage and compute resources” which resulted in connectivity failures that affected downstream Microsoft 365 services dependent on these connections.

The tech giant said the issue “may be impacting” any user attempting to use various Microsoft 365 apps and services.

The services affected include PowerBI, Microsoft Fabric, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365 admin center, and Microsoft Purview, the firm said.

“We’re continuing to progress on our mitigation efforts for the affected Microsoft 365 apps and services. We still expect users to see remediation as we address residual impact,” Microsoft said.

The organisation noted that Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Intune, OneDrive for business, and SharePoint Online, are some of its services that have been restored.