Global Services Slowly Recover After Massive Microsoft software outage

Multiple services ranging from airlines to healthcare around the world are slowly recovering after a massive Microsoft software outage affected computer systems for hours yesterday. Millions of people around the globe were affected by widespread Microsoft software outage.

Businesses, banking services, hospitals and airline operation were among the worst-hit after US cyber-security firm Crowdstrike issued a faulty software update which affected Microsoft Windows’s operating system, rendering devices around the world inoperable.

Microsoft CEO Satya Narayana Nadella said in a social media post that they working closely with CrowdStrike and across the industry to provide customers technical guidance and support to bring the systems back online safely.

Crowdstrike’s CEO apologised for the disruption and said a fix has been issued. He admitted that it (Microsoft software outage) will take some time before all systems were back up and running.

While some airline services are beginning to return to normal after thousands of flights were cancelled, operators expect some delays and cancellations to persist through the weekend. Over 5,000 flights were cancelled worldwide following the global IT outage, which also caused major delays. Queues continue to grow at some airports.

In India, numerous flights were either delayed or cancelled. Several airlines had to resort to manual check-in and boarding processes at the airports and requested passengers to reach airports early. Flight operations at Indira Gandhi International Airport were also affected due to the issue. Delhi Airport in a social media post said, it is closely working with all its stakeholders to minimise the inconvenience to the flyers.

Flight operations of about 30 services of various airlines were also disrupted at the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (RGIA) in Hyderabad due global outage. Till last evening, 36 flights flying in and out of RGIA were cancelled.

These include departures and arrivals. The affected routes include Bangalore, Tirupati, Visakhapatnam, Cochin, Coimbatore, Thiruvananthapuram, Ahmedabad, Bhubaneswar, Raipur and Jaipur. Many passengers have been enduring long queues, unable to check in their bags or receive boarding passes.

Minister of Electronics and Information Technology, Ashwini Vaishnaw yesterday said, government is in touch with Microsoft and its associates regarding the global outage, which in turn is actively working with impacted entities.

In a social media post, Mr Vaishnaw said Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) is coordinating with Chief Information Security Officers, CISOs of critical infrastructure entities. He added that all impacted entities are working to bring up their systems and in many cases, systems are partially up.

Meanwhile, the Indian financial and payments systems remained largely unaffected by the Microsoft services outage. In a statement, the Reserve Bank of India said it has made an assessment of the impact of the outage on its regulated entities which shows that only 10 banks and NBFCs had minor disruptions which have either been resolved or are being resolved.

Overall, it said, the Indian financial sector in the Reserve Bank’s domain remains insulated from the global outage. The RBI said that critical systems of most banks are not in cloud and further, only a few banks are using the CrowdStrike tool.

National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) chief executive Dilip Asbe said the country’s payments architecture, including the widely popular Unified Payments Interface, has been unaffected. The RBI said it has issued an advisory to all of its Regulated Entities for taking necessary steps to remain alert and ensure operational resilience and continuity.

Worldwide, many businesses are now dealing with backlogs and missed orders that could take days to resolve due to Microsoft software outage.

Health services across the globe including Britain, Israel and Germany also suffered problems, with some operations cancelled.

The global chaos has sparked concern over the vulnerability of the world’s interconnected technologies, and the extent to which a single software glitch could have such widespread impact.