Banks, airlines, television networks and healthcare systems around the world that rely on Microsoft 365 applications were hit by widespread outages linked to the company CrowdStrike early Friday. Thousands of flights and train services were canceled worldwide, including more than 1,800 in the United States, and many other public and commercial services were disrupted.
Here’s what we know about the outages:
What caused Microsoft’s global outages?
The problem was caused by a technical glitch that the global cybersecurity company Crowd strike CrowdStrike said it has identified the issue in its software and is working to resolve it. CrowdStrike provides antivirus software to Microsoft for its Windows devices.
“Earlier today, a CrowdStrike update caused a number of computer systems to go down around the world,” Microsoft said in a statement to CBS News.
Later Friday, Microsoft said on social media that it had “completed our mitigation actions and our telemetry indicates that all previously impacted Microsoft 365 apps and services have recovered. We are entering a monitoring period to ensure the impact is fully resolved.”
In a statement, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said the issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented. He added that this is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.
Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
In an update shared on social media Friday afternoon, Kurtz again apologized to those affected and said he was committed “to providing full transparency on how this happened and what steps we are taking to prevent something like this from happening again.”
What was affected by Microsoft outages?
More than 3,000 flights were cancelled As of Friday evening, more than 11,400 other flights were delayed, according to flight tracking service FlightAware. Globally, more than 42,000 flights were delayed Friday.
American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines resumed at least some flight departures later Friday morning after suspending operations earlier in the day due to the outages.
“We resumed operations today and look forward to providing reliable service to our customers tomorrow,” American Airlines said in a statement Friday evening.
Toby Enqvist, United Airlines’ chief operating officer, said in a statement Friday evening that “while we have had to cancel and delay many more flights than we wanted, we are prepared to return to near-normal operations on Saturday.”
A timelapse shared by the Federal Aviation Administration showed flights resuming Friday afternoon.
Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston canceled all previously scheduled surgeries and doctor visits that were not considered urgent because many computer systems were down, preventing access to vital digital records.
“We do everything on our computers now,” Meghan Mahoney, a neurological critical care nurse, told CBS News. “…Patients’ medical histories, their allergies. So when all that goes away, we have to go back to paper records.”
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York has postponed all procedures requiring anesthesia. Emory Health System in Atlanta has postponed some types of surgeries. Seattle Children’s Hospital has closed its outpatient clinic.
The Department of Health and Human Services said Friday afternoon that it was “working to assess the impact of the CrowdStrike outage on patient care and on HHS systems, services and operations.”
A Department of Homeland Security memo to staff obtained by CBS News states that “DHS systems are currently impacted by a global outage of CrowdStrike cybersecurity software. This is affecting many businesses around the world, as you can see in the news. This is not a cyberattack.”
Portland, Oregon Mayor Ted Wheeler issued an emergency declaration for the city on Friday. The declaration will allow for an “immediate response and resources to return city systems to fully operational levels.” New York CityMayor Eric Adams said the outage did not have a major impact on city operations because of previous drills that were conducted to educate officials on how to respond to a computer problem.
The FAA is working closely with airlines impacted by a global IT issue. This timelapse shows air traffic resuming after airlines requested FAA assistance with grounding this morning. Contact your airline for more information and follow them https://t.co/smgdqJN3td. pic.twitter.com/inRTK6ovTI
— The FAA ✈️ (@FAANews) July 19, 2024
In Europe, Lufthansa, KLM and SAS Airlines reported disruptions. Switzerland’s largest airport reported that planes were not allowed to land, according to CBS News partner BBC News. In India, Delhi, the country’s main airport, was all done manually. No electronic check-in terminals were working and gate information was updated by hand on a whiteboard, the BBC reported.
German hospitals announced Friday they were canceling elective surgeries and British doctors reported difficulties accessing their online booking system. British pharmacists said drug deliveries and access to prescriptions were disrupted.
Bing Guan/REUTERS
The FBI said there were no operational issues related to the outage, although some of its systems were affected. Those systems have workarounds that allow them to be used even during the outage.
The London Stock Exchange said it had suffered disruptions to its regulatory information service but that trading had not been affected. A spokesman for the New York Stock Exchange said markets were fully operational and a normal opening was expected.
Starbucks said the outage was prevent customers to use its mobile ordering features. Delivery companies like FedEx have also reported that some packages may be delayed due to breakdowns.
“FedEx has activated contingency plans to mitigate the impacts of a global IT outage at a third-party software vendor. However, potential delays are possible for package deliveries with a commitment to July 19, 2024,” the company said in a statement.
When will Microsoft’s outages be fixed?
Even though CrowdStrike has implemented a patch, some of the issues caused will likely take time to resolve, Omer Grossman, chief information officer at identity security firm CyberArk, told Reuters. He said the problem is related to Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) products that run on individual client computers.
“It turns out that the terminals have crashed (blue screen of death) and cannot be updated remotely, so the problem has to be resolved manually, terminal by terminal. This process is expected to take several days,” Grossman said.
In an interview with CNBC, CrowdStrike’s Kurtz said many affected systems are already beginning to recover and that a solution could be as simple for some customers as restarting their computers or servers.
He acknowledged, however, that “some systems may not fully recover, and we are working individually with each customer to ensure that we can get them back up and running.”
Kurtz did not provide a timeline, and it appeared that many businesses and organizations around the world would have to rely on their own technology services to get their systems back up and running.
— Kris Van Cleave contributed to this report.