A global technology outage grounded flights, knocked banks and hospital systems offline, and media outlets off air on Friday in a massive disruption that affected companies and services around the world and highlighted dependence on software from a handful of providers.
Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said the outage was not thought to have been caused by a security incident or cyberattack—and that a fix was on the way. The company said the problem occurred when it deployed a faulty update to computers running Microsoft Windows.
Locally, a representative for Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center told Daily Report that the hospital had not been affected by the outage to his knowledge, and an employee of Ochsner Medical Complex – The Grove said she was not aware of any disruption at the facility. It was not clear if other Baton Rouge hospitals had been affected as of this morning’s publication deadline.
Meanwhile, the Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport was expecting delays this morning, but ground stops have been lifted for United, Delta and American Airlines.
“We were told that each of the airlines is up and functioning,” says Kristin Jewell with the airport. “We do expect a few delays just from the earlier setbacks. However, I believe all the flights that are scheduled to leave soon are safely going to do so.”
As of 8:15 a.m., Jewell said there were no long lines at the airport, and that any flight changes, concerns or questions should be directed to the respective airlines.
Long lines formed at airports in the U.S., Europe and Asia as airlines lost access to check-in and booking services at a time when many travelers are heading away on summer vacations. News outlets in Australia—where telecommunications were severely affected—were pushed off air for hours. Hospitals and doctor’s offices had problems with their appointment systems, while banks in South Africa and New Zealand reported outages to their payment system or websites and apps.
“This is a very, very uncomfortable illustration of the fragility of the world’s core internet infrastructure,” said Ciaran Martin, a professor at Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government and former head of Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre.
Cyber expert James Bore said real harm would be caused by the outage because systems we’ve come to rely on at critical times are not going to be available. Hospitals, for example, will struggle to sort out appointments and those who need care may not get it.
“There are going to be deaths because of this. It’s inevitable,’’ Bore said. “We’ve got so many systems tied up with this.”
Microsoft 365 posted on social media platform X that the company was “working on rerouting the impacted traffic to alternate systems to alleviate impact” and that they were “observing a positive trend in service availability.”
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