Friday July 19, 2024, Microsoft had a global outage affecting almost every major business sector one way or another due to a mistake in the system. Airports and flights across the world were delayed for long periods of time or even cancelled due to the computers being disrupted which are heavily relied on. Major airlines such as American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and United Airlines were all affected by the outage. Therefore, this forced people to find another form of transportation to their destination.
Planes were forced to issue ground stops and there were many communication failures making flights unsafe for passengers. In many different airports, their electronic systems failed which includes checking in tickets and baggage, so passengers had to be checked in manually.
Sophomore Lily Mitman was flying back to Atlanta from Washington D.C. when her flight was delayed three hours. When asked how she felt towards Microsoft after her situation she said, “I think software is important but also harmful because people rely on it. For me, in school I basically use it every day that it has become the normal.”
Not only did the outage affect airports and planes but it also affected businesses such as banks where the money of customers became inaccessible in Australia and New Zealand.
The London Stock Exchange, which stated some of their services, has been disrupted. A few McDonalds restaurants in Japan which were temporarily closed due to “cash register malfunction” stated in an online statement.
Waitrose, a British grocery store, had signs telling customers the store was only accepting cash. Some Starbucks sites closed temporarily because of their online mobile ordering malfunctioning. But for the sites that did not close, baristas had to come up with new workflows to keep the business running productively.
In Poland, a global shipping terminal called Baltic Hub said it was undergoing issues. Alaska State Troopers announced to citizens that the 911 call line was temporarily down. Sky news, which is owned by NBCUniversal’s parent company, Comcast, was also shortly kicked off the air.
Later the next day, CrowdStrike, a cyber security program, were found to be the initiators for the outage. The company came out with a statement identifying the problem and issued a fix.
CrowdStrike automatically updates a lot of overtime for new tactics that hackers have discovered. But there is a slight risk that any software update in the system will be incompatible with other programs. An update that week had an error in its code which conflicted with windows initiating the outage.
The fix required affected computers to download another software update which could also be done automatically. At the New Hampshire Department of Safety, all their software were down but then back up the next day.
For some companies, the update required IT workers to reboot and tamper with all the affected computers.
Today, companies, businesses, and airports are still trying to recover from the outage.
