Reporter: Stuart Littleford
Public sector organisations as well as businesses including banks, airlines, telecommunications companies, TV and radio broadcasters, train companies, have been affected by a mass global IT outage today.
GP surgeries are reporting difficulties accessing patient data and appointment systems with many resorting to using hand written notes and manual filing systems.
It is thought the outage is related to an issue at the global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike and Microsoft – although it is not known if it is the same issue affecting airports and train services across the globe.
Major US airlines including American Airlines, Delta Airlines and United Airlines have been grounded, while airports in Germany, Amsterdam and Spain are also reporting issues.
NHS England told GPSJ the IT outage is “causing disruption in the majority of GP practices” in England but there is currently no known impact on 999 or emergency services.
Dan Card, of The Chartered Institute for IT (BCS) and a cyber security expert told GPSJ: “People should remain calm whilst organisations respond to this global issue. It’s affecting a very wide range of services from banks to stores top air travel.
“It looks like a bug to a regular security update, rather than any form of ‘mega cyber attack’, but this is still causing worldwide challenges and is likely to require a large number of people to make manual remedial steps.
“Companies should make sure their IT teams are well supported as it will be a difficult and highly stressful weekend for them as they help customers of all kinds. People often forget the people that are running around fixing things.”
Mark Jow of Security Evangelist, Gigamon, told GPSJ: “This Microsoft IT outage demonstrates the need for more robust and resilient solutions, so that when these issues do arise, they can be resolved quickly without causing such widespread customer chaos and security risk.
Preparedness is key – every IT and security vendor must have a robust system in place across its software development lifecycle to test upgrades before they are rolled out to ensure that there are no flaws within the updates.”
The worldwide IT outage today could create severe knock-on effects for global supply chains, warns the international delivery expert Parcelhero. The outage, understood to be caused by an issue with an update at cybersecurity giant Crowdstrike, impacted many Windows-based systems. It could lead to widespread disruption to supply chains and deliveries across the world, Parcelhero warns.
Parcelhero’s Head of Consumer Research, David Jinks M.I.L.T., speaking to GPSJ, said: “Many airports, ports, railways and retailers reported problems as a result of the IT outage.
“Delayed flights and issues with IT systems at airports will impact airfreight. Not only will slots for dedicated airfreight flights be disrupted, but many international goods and packages are transported not only in specially designed cargo planes but also in the cargo holds of passenger aircraft. 1,000 flights globally were reported to have been cancelled by Friday mid-morning.
“International ports have also been impacted by the issues. For example, Poland’s largest container terminal, the Baltic Hub in Gdansk, asked companies to stop sending containers to the port, saying “…a global Microsoft operating system outage (that) is hampering terminal operations.” Delayed and out-of-position containers are never good, as many people will remember from the global shortages created by the Suez Canal blockage caused by the ship “Ever Given” back in 2021.
“Similarly, across the UK and globally, there are reports of many delayed and cancelled rail services. In the UK, for example, Avanti West Coast, Great Western Railway and Southern were among the major operators reporting problems. Freight trains have to be threaded between passenger services and so are likely to face disruption.
“Retailers also experienced problems. The supermarket chain Morrisons reported payment issues, for example, although these were largely resolved by mid-morning. The bakery and coffee shop chain Gails also had to suspend in-store purchases. Perhaps more concerningly, UK community pharmacies were impacted by the outage.
“Time will tell the extent of disruption to international trade and industry caused by the global IT issue. It’s believed that a Crowdstrike update caused a BSOD loop on some Windows machines, meaning they repeatedly booted and crashed. The problem was that many systems updated automatically overnight. Crowdstrike is reported to have rolled back the update and the company stated on Friday morning that “a fix has been deployed”.
However, it could be some time before its impact has been resolved on all systems, as IT staff may need to physically access individual machines to boot them into safe mode and remove the update file. ‘Parcelhero’s international services use all the leading global courier networks. If there is an issue with one international carrier’s services, customers will be able to select from many other operators to that destination.”
Recent Comments