Muthomi Ireri
On Friday, a major global tech outage disrupted multiple industries, causing widespread operational issues. Airlines including American Airlines, Delta, United, and Allegiant Air halted flights due to communication problems. This followed a cloud services outage by Microsoft that affected several low-cost carriers, though the connection between the two issues is unclear.
Australia’s government linked the outages affecting media, banks, and telecom companies to a problem with Crowdstrike’s Falcon Sensor software, which reportedly caused Microsoft Windows to crash. Crowdstrike has not commented on the situation, and there is no evidence suggesting the outage was due to a cybersecurity breach.
The impact of the outage was extensive. Airports around the world, including those in Tokyo, Amsterdam, Berlin, and Spain, experienced system problems and delays. Major airlines, including Ryanair, faced booking system issues.
In the UK, medical booking systems went offline, and Sky News, a major broadcaster, was unable to transmit live. Banks and financial institutions from Australia to South Africa reported service disruptions. The London Stock Exchange Group also experienced issues with its data and news platform.
Amazon’s AWS cloud service provider is investigating connectivity problems with its Windows EC2 instances and Workspaces. It remains unclear whether all outages are related to the Crowdstrike issue or if other factors are involved.
Dj Vnyash
Silverio Omari
