Global IT Outage chaos persists , could take time to fix

Summary
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The boss of the cybersecurity firm responsible for worldwide IT outages admits it could be “some time” before all systems are back up and running
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While the software bug has been fixed, experts say the manual reboot of each affected Microsoft computer will take a huge amount of work
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Thousands of flights have been cancelled, with banking, healthcare and payment systems all affected
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In the UK, GPs have been struggling to access records, pharmacies have been hit and TV channels knocked off air
Watch: Blue screens, queues and airport delays worldwide
A massive tech failure has caused travel chaos around the world, with banking and healthcare services also badly hit.
We’ve wrapped up the key developments from across the day here:
United says flights resumed – but further disruption expected
United Airlines says it has resumed some flights.
But the US airline says it expects schedule disruption throughout the day as it continues “to troubleshoot many systems and programs”.
For those travelling today, it says it has issued a “travel waiver” to make it easier for passengers to change their plans.
Outside Crowdstrike’s head office, we can only guess at atmosphere inside
We’re in Austin, Texas outside the innocuous looking office block at the heart of the global IT meltdown.
In contrast to the chaos at airports, the main offices of Crowdstrike have very little visible activity.
No sign of any stressed employees frantically running to their desks, but we can only guess at the atmosphere inside.
Crowdstrike has a lot of questions to answer.
The news crews who were here earlier have hurried off to cover the human scenes of chaos and disruption elsewhere.
The CEO of Crowdstrike has turned down our request for an interview but has been on the airwaves on the American business news channel CNBC, promising that it will make sure that all customers recover from the outage.
Nothing is more important than customer trust – Crowdstrike CEO
Crowdstrike CEO George Kurtz says “nothing is more important” to him than the trust and confidence of the cybersecurity firm’s customers and partners.
In a letter, external sent to its customers and partners, Kurtz apologises for the global IT outage and says Crowdstrike “understands the gravity and impact of the situation”.
“We are working closely with impacted customers and partners to ensure that all systems are restored, so you can deliver the services your customers rely on,” he says.
He urges people to only engage with official Crowdstrike representatives, adding that “bad actors” will try to “exploit” the situation.
“As we resolve this incident, you have my commitment to provide full transparency on how this occurred and steps we’re taking to prevent anything like this from happening again.
More than 5,000 flights cancelled globally
The number of flights cancelled across the world after major IT disruption has risen to 5,078 – 4.6% of those scheduled – according to the latest update from aviation analytics firm Cirium.
In the UK, 167 departures have been cancelled – 5.4% of those scheduled – and 171 arrivals were cancelled, the firm says.
Billboards in Times Square go blank
We can bring you some images now from New York City’s Times Square, where some billboards went blank during today’s IT outage.
Photos show black screens and “the blue screen of death” in place of the vibrant advertisements that typically light up the area.
Tom Harris, president of the Times Square Alliance, says a “handful” of the more than 100 billboards in the area remained offline earlier on Friday, AP reports.
He added that it’s unclear whether all the blackouts were related to the outage.
What is Crowdstrike?published at 19:48
Crowdstrike is a cybersecurity company founded in 2011 with the aim of safeguarding the world’s biggest companies and hardware from cyber threats and vulnerabilities.
It specialises in endpoint security protection and tries to prevent malicious software or files from hitting corporate networks from devices that connect to them, such as phones and laptops.
It also aims to protect the data of companies which have shifted from guarding it under their own roof, or on their own servers, to so-called cloud providers.
The Texas-based firm was co-founded by entrepreneurs George Kurtz, who remains chief executive, and Dmitri Alperovitch. It listed its shares publicly on the tech heavy Nasdaq stock exchange in 2019.
Since it first launched, the company has seemingly played a key role in helping firms investigate cyber-attacks.
In 2016 Crowdstrike was called in by the US Democratic National Committee, the strategy arm of the Democrat Party, to investigate a breach into its computer network.
Ambulance services report surge in demand
Ambulance services have recorded higher than normal demand amid the IT outages today.
Some trusts pointed to the disruption suffered by other healthcare services during the IT disruption – GPs and pharmacies have been affected by outages, and some hospital appointments were also postponed.
The North East, South East Coast, South Central and London ambulance services have all recorded increased demand. The surge in London has been described as “huge”.
Patients with the most serious or life-threatening conditions have been prioritised, with others being warned wait times could be impacted.
Source: BBC