On Friday, a significant technical issue caused widespread outages in Microsoft 365 apps, impacting a variety of critical services around the world. Banks, airlines, television networks, and health systems reported disruptions, leading to the cancellation of thousands of flights and train services and affecting many public and retail services.
CrowdStrike, a global cybersecurity firm, traced the global outages to a technical problem in its software. CrowdStrike’s antivirus software for Microsoft Windows devices experienced a defect, which the company quickly identified and began working to resolve.
In a statement, Microsoft confirmed, “The underlying cause has been fixed; however, the residual impact continues to affect some Microsoft 365 apps and services. We’re conducting additional mitigations to provide relief.”
CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz also emphasised that this was not a security incident or cyberattack. “This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated, and a fix has been deployed,” Kurtz said.
The outages had a massive ripple effect across various sectors:
Despite the deployment of a fix by CrowdStrike, the nature of the issue is likely to prolong the recovery process.CyberArk’s Chief Information Officer, Omer Grossman, clarified that the issue with Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) products necessitates the manual handling of each affected endpoint. “It turns out that because the endpoints have crashed — the Blue Screen of Death — they cannot be updated remotely, and the problem must be solved manually, endpoint by endpoint. Grossman expects this process to take days.
New Zealand’s acting Prime Minister, David Seymour, assured that officials were working hard to understand the full impact of the outages and confirmed there was no indication of malicious cyber activity. Similarly, a spokesman for Germany’s interior ministry echoed that there was no evidence suggesting a cyberattack.
The widespread outages in Microsoft 365 apps highlight the significant impact that technical issues in critical software can have on global operations. Despite addressing the immediate cause, the recovery process continues, causing disruptions to many services. The incident underscores the importance of robust and resilient IT infrastructure in maintaining the continuity of essential services across sectors.
For the latest updates on the resolution of these outages and their impact, stay tuned to our blog and social media channels.
