Microsoft Largest Outage in History Creates Global Chaos; Airlines, Health, Banking Badly Hit

New Delhi: The CrowdStrike-Microsoft outage, which occurred early Friday, stands out as one of the largest IT disruptions in history. The global outage, causing ‘Blue Screen of Death’ error messages severely affected financial markets, including banks and non-banking financial companies (NBFCs), disrupting trading activities and transactions. Public transport systems, aviation operations, corporate enterprises, media broadcasting, and the hospitality industry have also been hit hard, experiencing widespread service interruptions and operational chaos. 

The global IT outage has raised several questions. Is this a cyberattack? How did it happen? Why is Microsoft in the news? What role did CrowdStrike play? What has the Indian government said about the disruption? And why is the "blue screen of death" trending?

How did Friday's global outage happen?

Friday's chaos began with a faulty update was pushed out from CrowdStrike. In a Friday post on social media platform X, President and CEO George Kurtz cited a “defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts” — noting that Mac and Linux hosts were not impacted. But, because scores of companies rely on CrowdStrike for their security needs with Windows as their operating system, the consequences of this kind of technical problem are far-reaching.

DownDectector, which tracks user-reported disruptions to internet services, recorded that airlines, payment platforms and online shopping websites across the world were affected — although the disruption appeared piecemeal and was apparently related to whether the companies used Microsoft cloud-based services. Still, experts stress that Friday’s disruptions underscore the vulnerability of worldwide dependence on software that comes from only a handful of providers.

“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.    

Microsoft Outage: Impact Across Key Sectors

Stock Market Disruptions: In India, shares of stock brokerage firms like Angel One and 5paisa Capital saw declines on Friday due to operational disruptions caused by the outage. Globally, bankers in Hong Kong, Dubai, South Africa, and London experienced difficulties accessing computer systems and executing trades.

Airline and Airport Chaos: The global aviation sector faced significant disruptions, with airports and airlines reporting delays, cancellations, and manual check-ins. In India, IndiGo canceled over 200 flights, and airlines such as SpiceJet, Air India, Air India Express, and Vistara issued advisories to passengers.

Financial Sector Impact: The global financial industry was heavily affected. In India, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) reported that the outage caused minor disruptions for 10 banks and non-banking financial companies (NBFCs). The RBI assured that these issues are being addressed and that critical banking systems were largely unaffected.

Healthcare Disruptions: Health systems worldwide faced challenges, with some procedures canceled and reliance on handwritten records. The UK's National Health Service (NHS) experienced disruptions in booking doctor appointments and accessing patient records, although emergency services remained operational.

Media Broadcast Interruptions: In the UK, Sky News resumed broadcasting after several hours of outage but operated at reduced capacity. Australia's ABC also reported a "major network outage," though details on the cause were not provided.  

Role of Crowdstrike

At the heart of the massive disruption is CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm that provides software to scores of companies worldwide. The company says the problem occurred when it deployed a faulty update to computers running Microsoft Windows, and that the issue behind the outage was not a security incident or cyberattack.

Later, the company's CEO issued an apology.  "We're deeply sorry for the impact that we've caused to customers, to travellers, to anyone affected by this, including our company," Kurtz said during an interview on NBC News' "Today" programme. He noted that many customers are rebooting their systems, which are becoming operational again. However, he acknowledged that it might take some time for certain systems to recover fully. The company is committed to ensuring every customer is fully recovered.  

What is CrowdStrike?

CrowdStrike is a U.S. cybersecurity company that provides software to companies around the world and across industries. It bills itself as being the globe's most advanced cloud-based security technology provider. “We stop breaches,” the cybersecurity firm writes on its website.

According to the company's website, CrowdStrike was founded in 2011 and launched in early 2012. CrowdStrike listed on the Nasdaq exchange five years ago. Last month, the Austin, Texas company reported that its revenue rose 33% in the last quarter from the same quarter a year earlier — logging a net profit of $42.8 million, up from $491,000 in the first quarter of last year.

CrowdStrike has a partnership with Amazon Web Services and its “Falcon for Defender” security technology is designed to supplement Microsoft Defender to prevent attacks.  

What Indian govt said?

Ashwini Vaishnaw, India's Minister for Information & Broadcasting, Electronics & Information Technology, took to X and said that his ministry is actively coordinating with Microsoft and its partners to address the global outage. "The reason for this outage has been identified and updates have been released to resolve the issue," he stated, adding that the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) is issuing a technical advisory. He also informed that the National Informatics Centre (NIC) "network is not affected".  

Microsoft 365 Services Recovered

Hours later, Microsoft 365 services were “recovered” after “mitigation actions”, the tech giant claimed.

 “We've completed our mitigation actions and our telemetry indicates all previously impacted Microsoft 365 apps and services have recovered. We're entering a period of monitoring to ensure the impact is fully resolved. For more information, see MO821132 within the admin centre", Microsoft said in a post on X.