A major global outage. The effects could be felt for weeks

A global IT system failure caused , and 11 thousand did not reach their destination on time. Passengers were checked in longer than usual. According to the American services, normal air traffic should be restored on Saturday. Problems also affected travelers at airports in Europe and Asia – according to , disruptions affected thousands of flights. But that’s not all.

Global outage. Serious problems in hospitals, canceled procedures

Financial institutions also had problems, with banks in South Africa and New Zealand reporting service outages. Some news stations, particularly in Australia, were unable to broadcast for hours. Parts of the United States experienced problems with the 911 emergency number. Hotels and even blood donation centers reported disruptions. Hospitals also had serious problems. Harris Health System, which runs public hospitals and clinics in the Houston area, said Friday morning that it had to suspend hospital visits “until further notice.” Elective hospital procedures were canceled and postponed.

The outage also affected records at Providence Health System, which has 51 hospitals in Alaska, California, Montana, Oregon and Washington state. At Guthrie Clinics in New York and Pennsylvania, emergency departments were open, but outpatient labs and routine tests were canceled. “It really makes you realize how dependent we are on technology and how terrifying it is,” said Alison Baulos. Her 73-year-old father was scheduled to undergo open-heart surgery at Baptist Hospital in Kentucky, but it was canceled.

Microsoft Windows outage in Poland

– The effects of all incidents and problems reported in Poland during the global IT system failure are being monitored and removed on an ongoing basis – assures Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Digital Affairs Krzysztof Gawkowski. In a post on social media, he emphasized that the failure is slowly but systematically being removed. He also thanked all the services and institutions that have been “continuously watching over Polish security” for the last dozen or so hours. “Words of appreciation also for the private part of the digital market, which has shown great responsibility and cooperated flawlessly. Everyone rose to the challenge” – added Krzysztof Gawkowski.

In an earlier post, the minister informed, among other things, that “critical infrastructure systems are operating smoothly”. “The global failure of Microsoft systems is being monitored by Polish services responsible for cybersecurity,” he emphasized.

Impact of Microsoft outage on markets

According to Grzegorz Dróżdż, an analyst at Conotoxia Ltd. (Invest.Cinkciarz.pl), we were dealing for the first time with a “real blackout”. “What previously seemed like science fiction has become a reality, showing the fragility of modern technological systems. This incident has made us realize how dependent we are on a single technology company and how serious the consequences of a failure of such an entity on such a scale can be. This is a perfect example of what Nassim Taleb describes as a ‘black swan’,” the expert emphasizes. He adds that Microsoft’s shares on the German stock exchange fell by more than 2 percent, while CrowdStrike, which confirmed that the problem concerns its Falcon Sensor software, fell by almost 14 percent. Although the failure was quickly identified and fixed, shares of CrowdStrike’s competitors gained as much as 6 percent in pre-market trading. “The decline in Microsoft’s shares and many other companies affected by the blackout will likely have a negative impact on the quotations of the main US indices, because Microsoft, the world’s second largest company by capitalization, has a market share of 8.7 percent. share in the Nasdaq 100 index and 7 percent in the S&P 500 index,” the analyst comments.

Microsoft shares Screenshot/stooq.pl

Cyber ​​Paralysis: CrowdStrike CEO Apologizes

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said the cause of the outage was an update to its Falcon software on Windows systems. Microsoft assured that the causes of the outage have been fixed, although their effects will still affect the functioning of some services. – We express our regret to those affected by the outage. From our direct customers to travelers. We apologize to everyone. We identified the fault very quickly. We fixed the systems. We are currently working with every customer who is having problems with the network – emphasized the CrowdStrike CEO.

Meanwhile, as one of the British experts quoted by , assesses, “in some cases the fix can be applied very quickly, but if the computers reacted with blue screens and endless loops, it may be difficult to restore the systems to operation”. – It can take days, or even weeks – indicates Adam Leon Smith, a researcher at BCS.