Microsoft outage disrupts global IT; Airlines ground flights; CrowdStrike blames Windows update
Hospitals across the U.S. are canceling operations
Hospitals and medical centers across the United States are turning patients away in the the wake of the global IT problems today.
The Harris Health Quentin Mease Health Center in Houston said it was canceling all elective procedures and outpatient care, while Mass General Brigham in Boston canceled “all previously scheduled non-urgent surgeries, procedures, and medical visits are cancelled today.”
The Boston hospital said in a statement: “A major worldwide software outage has affected many of our systems at Mass General Brigham, as well as many major businesses across the country.”
Mass General assured the public that “we continue to care for all patients currently receiving care in our hospitals.”
The University of Miami Health System said its facilities were open but warned that there would be delays due to computers records being unavailable.
Meet CrowdStrike, the company at the heart of the global tech outage
A fault with an update issued by cybersecurity company CrowdStrike led to a cascading effect among global IT systems today, with industries ranging from banking to airlines facing outages.
Banks and health care providers saw their services disrupted and TV broadcasters went offline as businesses worldwide grappled with the ongoing outage. Air travel has been hit hard, too, with planes grounded and services delayed.
So what happened, exactly? CNBC takes a look.
The IT outages that are affecting businesses across the world have caused more than half of flights delayed or canceled by 8 a.m. ET across the United States, according to data from FlightAware.
Photos: From Bangkok to Berlin, outages cause airport chaos
An airline employee holds up a sign informing travelers as they line up at the check-in counters of the Hong Kong International Airport this morning.
Crowds build up at Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, Thailand.
An employee at Berlin Airport speaks tries to update passengers as widespread outages caused mass confusion.
CrowdStrike CEO apologizes but warns recovery ‘could be some time’
George Kurtz, president and CEO of CrowdStrike, the company at the center of today’s enormous IT outages, says the problems could persist for some time yet.
“It could be some time for some systems that just automatically won’t recover,” Kurtz told NBC’s “TODAY” show this morning.
Kurtz said the company was “deeply sorry for the impact that we’ve caused to customers, to travelers, to anyone affected by this,” adding the issue has been fixed on their end.
“Many of the customers are rebooting the system, and it’s coming up, and it’ll be operational because we fixed it on our end,” he said. “We’re just trying to sort out where the negative interaction was,” he said of the faulty update that affected Windows PCs.
Getting services back up and running won’t be easy, experts warn
The Microsoft cloud computing outages that left airports, shops and broadcasters without services will not be easily fixed, tech experts have warned.
Fixing the issues may involve a manual effort on the part of users, Omer Grossman, CIO at cybersecurity firm CyberArk, told CNBC.
“It turns out that because the endpoints have crashed — the Blue Screen of Death — they cannot be updated remotely and this the problem must be solved manually, endpoint by endpoint. This is expected to be a process that will take days,” he said.
The global IT outage is having a “profound impact,” and nothing similar has ever been seen before, Satnam Narang, senior staff researcher at Tenable, told CNBC today.
“It’s very far reaching and we’re still just in the beginnings of this right now,” he said. Companies and organizations were trying to deal with the impact of the issues, as attempts were being made to resolve it, which would take time, according to Narang.
“We’ve never seen anything like this before, it’s very unprecedented.”
Morning commuters face disruption from IT outage
Commuters riding the bus and train services in New York will have to listen closely to station announcements after the MTA’s systems were taken offline due to the outage.
The “train and bus service is unaffected,” Metropolitan Transportation Authority said this morning in a statement.
Washington’s transit agency, WMATA, said the train’s start time of 5 a.m. was delayed and commuters could experience more delays on its buses and trains.
Early morning passengers faced with blue screens at Newark
Travelers walk past a departures board displaying a blue error screen in Newark International Airport this morning.
New Hampshire 911 services back online after outage
The New Hampshire Department of Safety said its 911 service was back online early today after an interruption related to the global outage of Microsoft cloud computing services that began around 1 a.m. ET.
“911 server system has been fully restored and emergency calls to 911 are being processed normally,” the department’s division of emergency services and communications said in an update, which confirmed the service was back as of 3 a.m.
It said the cause of the outage was under investigation but the department was “aware of information technology outages reported nationwide.” The department also urged people not to see if 911 is working with “test calls.”
Major computer outage could impact 911 services but ‘is not a cyberattack’
NBC News’ business and data correspondent Brian Cheung explains that CrowdStrike is deploying a fix that caused computer outages worldwide. He said people should not try calling 911 to test the system.
