Banks, airlines, media outlets and other business across the globe struggled to deal with one of the biggest IT crashes in recent years on Friday.
Initially, major US air airlines grounded all flights over a communication issue, though American Airlines later said it had reinstated its flights.
Check-in systems were down and services were being handled manually, with delays likely, according to airports across the globe.
In a technical update on its website, Microsoft said the problems began at 1900 GMT on Thursday, affecting users of its Azure cloud platform running cybersecurity software CrowdStrike Falcon.
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It said: “We recommend customers that are able to, to restore from a backup from before this time.”
In a post via X, CrowdStrike CEO, George Kurtz, said customers had been “impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts”.
“The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed,” he said.
Airports were reporting problems with their check-in systems from Amsterdam to Zurich, across all continents.
Flight passenger Alexander Ropicano told AFP, he waited at Sydney Airport in Australia, that’s “I’m just in limbo as to how long I’ve got to wait here.”
The 24-year-old, flying to Brisbane to see his girlfriend, said the airline told him to “wait until the system is operational again”, but there is no indication how long that could be.
Similarly, media firms were struggling with Britain’s Sky News saying the glitch had ended its morning news broadcasts and Australia’s ABC similarly reporting a major “outage”.
Some banks also reported difficulties in processing digital payments, mobile phone carriers were disrupted and customer services in a number of companies were down.
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