‘Largest IT outage in history’ leaves world reeling

Britain’s Royal Surrey Hospital in Guildford has declared a “critical incident” due to external IT issues that are affecting its services, as well as Varian — the IT system that it deploys for radiotherapy treatments.

A critical incident can be declared when hospitals and staff face extraordinary pressures.

The institution said that it is now able to deliver radiotherapy services, but it has had to reschedule appointments due to take place this morning. The disruptions may affect appointments into next week, Royal Surrey noted.

— Ruxandra Iordache

Several major U.K. companies were also impacted by Friday’s IT outage, with food retailer Waitrose temporarily halting contactless payments.

The British grocer said in a statement that all payment methods had resumed following a brief suspension, and that its John Lewis stores had not been impacted.

Other stores such as the Co-op appeared to resort to cash-only payments as the outage impacted self-checkout and cashier payment systems, according to posts shared on social media platform X.

Photos showed supermarket shelves with “cash-only” signs, while another post suggested bakery chain Gail’s was not taking card payments. Gail’s did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

– Karen Gilchrest

Troy Hunt, the respected cybersecurity researcher behind the popular password-breach monitoring service HaveIBeenPwned, labeled the ongoing global tech disruption as “the largest IT outage in history.”

The CrowdStrike outage has caused cascading failures across multiple industries, with myriad airlines issuing ground stops, broadcast networks going off-air and critical services rushing to ameliorate the damage.

– Rohan Goswami

Troy Hunt, the respected cybersecurity researcher behind the popular password-breach monitoring service HaveIBeenPwned, labeled the ongoing global tech disruption as “the largest IT outage in history.”

The CrowdStrike outage has caused cascading failures across multiple industries, with myriad airlines issuing ground stops, broadcast networks going off-air and critical services rushing to ameliorate the damage.

– Rohan Goswami

The ongoing global IT outage might not have an “incredibly straightforward” fix, according to Tom Lysemose Hansen, Chief Technology Officer at Norwegian cybersecurity company Promon.

“Crowdstrike’s affected customers will have to effectively break into their own systems to get everything back online by logging into the admin console and booting their systems in safe mode,” he said in emailed comments.

He added that CrowdStrike underpins the everyday operations of many organizations, “being present in anything from point of sale to ATMs as well as being used on Microsoft Windows systems.”

CrowdStrike earlier on Friday said it was applying a fix to an identified and isolated defect in a single-content update for Windows hosts. The company did not immediately disclose what this measure would entail.

— Ruxandra Iordache

The global IT outage is having a “profound impact,” and nothing similar has ever been seen before, Satnam Narang, senior staff researcher at Tenable, told CNBC on Friday.

“It’s very far reaching and we’re still just in the beginnings of this right now,” he said. Companies and organisations were trying to deal with the impact of the issues, as attempts were being made to resolve it, which would however take time, according to Narang.

“The challenge here is that security software because its doing its job to protect organisations it has to have more privileged access to these machines so you know while people may be seeing these as Windows failures, they’re looking at it and seeing a little blue screen pop up, it’s not actually a Windows issue, it’s related to a faulty or bad update from those security softwares,” he explained.

“We’ve never seen anything like this before, it’s very unprecedented.”

Speaking to CNBC from a hospital, Narang said health care was one of the key areas that has been impacted.

“Systems are offline which means, you know, patient records cant be accessed and medication can’t be administered properly to patients,” he said.

— Sophie Kiderlin

German security institutions are working with international partners to resolve an IT outage that has affected air travel, banking and several companies, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Friday, according to Reuters.

Scholz, who is currently visiting Belgrade, went on to say that he had no further details to add on the situation at this time.

— Ruxandra Iordache

A spokesperson for the U.S. National Security Council told CNBC that they were “aware of the incident and are looking into the issue and impacts.”

CrowdStrike has a comprehensive government contracting practice.

— Rohan Goswami

Microsoft users around the world are being hit with the “blue screen of death” error message.

The U.S. tech giant was impacted by an update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, which led to a major outage. Many other businesses have also been affected.

“We have been made aware of an issue impacting Virtual Machines running Windows Client and Windows Server, running the CrowdStrike Falcon agent, which may encounter a bug check (BSOD [blue screen of death) and get stuck in a restarting state. We approximate impact started around 19:00 UTC on the 18th of July,” Microsoft said in an update at 5:40 a.m. ET.

“We can confirm the affected update has been pulled by CrowdStrike. Customers that are continuing to experience issues should reach out to CrowdStrike for additional assistance,” the company added.

Read the full story here.

— Katrina Bishop

Switzerland’s National Cyber Security Service (NCSC) said it has received “corresponding reports from various companies and critical infrastructures in Switzerland” amid ongoing global system failures that the agency blamed on CrowdStrike.

“It is a faulty update or misconfiguration by the company CrowdStrike that is causing these system failures,” the NCSC said in an emailed statement. “The NCSC is in contact with the affected companies.”

CrowdStrike CEO George Kutz earlier in the day said that the company had deployed a fix to a defect found in an update for Windows hosts.

— Ruxandra Iordache

CrowdStrike is resolving a defect found in a single-content update for Windows hosts, the company’s CEO George Kurtz said on social media on Friday.

He added that Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted by the disruption.

“This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed,” he said, without supplying a timeline for when the outage is likely to be fully resolved.

— Ruxandra Iordache

American Airlines said it has resumed operations after the Microsoft outage, though disruptions have continued for many airline passengers on Friday.

“Earlier this morning, a technical issue with a vendor impacted multiple carriers, including American. As of 5 a.m. ET, we have been able to safely re-establish our operation,” American said in a statement. “We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience.”

— Leslie Josephs

Two German hospitals on Friday canceled elective procedures and closed their outpatient units due to the global IT outage impacting businesses around the world.

In a statement that was translated by CNBC, the University Clinic Schleswig-Holstein said both of its hospital locations — Kiel and Lübeck — were impacted by the issues.

Care for the patients who were already in the hospitals, as well as emergency care, have been secured, the statement said.

— Sophie Kiderlin

Departures of major U.S. airlines were halted on Friday as the carriers grappled with the Microsoft outage.

The Federal Aviation Administration had a ground stop in place for American, Delta and United as of Friday morning.

“The FAA is closely monitoring a technical issue impacting IT systems at U.S. airlines,” the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement. “Several airlines have requested FAA assistance with ground stops for their fleets until the issue is resolved.” The agency said to monitor fly.faa.gov for updates.

Images posted on social media showed blue screens in airports as travelers complained that they were unable to retrieve bags or rebook flights, with some of them facing disruptions overnight, local time, when staffing was thin.

“We’re aware of a technology issue with a vendor that is impacting multiple carriers. American is working with the vendor to resolve the issue as quickly as possible,” American said on social media platform X.

—Leslie Josephs

Indian IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said his department was “in touch with Microsoft and its associates regarding the global outage.”

“The reason for this outage has been identified and updates have been released to resolve the issue,” Vaishnaw said on social media platform X.

The National Informatics Centre, a partner of the Indian government, is not affected, he added.

— Jenni Reid

Britain’s National Health Service said it is experiencing disruptions in the majority of general practitioners offices as a result of the ongoing IT outage and an issue with an appointment and patient record system.

“The NHS has long standing measures in place to manage the disruption, including using paper patient records and handwritten prescriptions, and the usual phone systems to contact your GP.”

It added that there is currently no known impact on emergency services, including the 999 life-threatening emergency phone service.

— Ruxandra Iordache

CBBC, the children’s television channel of U.K. public service broadcaster the BBC, was still offline at 10:11 a.m. in London (5:11 a.m. ET).

The screen displayed a message saying: “Sorry! Something’s gone wrong.” It was the only BBC channel impacted, according to updates from the organization.

Sky News was unable to broadcast earlier in the morning, but has since resumed service.

— Jenni Reid

German insurer Allianz said its services have been impacted by the IT outage that has been enveloping businesses worldwide and is working to minimize the effect on customers and operations.

“We are currently experiencing a major outage that is impacting employees ability to log into their computers,” it said by email. “It impacts multiple companies besides Allianz, specifically affecting the Windows login and is caused by an incident at our provider CrowdStrike.”

The company did not immediately specify the number of employees affected.

— Ruxandra Iordache

Airports and airlines have been issuing advice to passengers as the global IT issues hit their systems, with many warning of delays.

London’s Gatwick Airport confirmed it began experiencing issues “early this morning” which were affecting “some airlines’ check-in systems, baggage and security, including eGates.”

“We are using our backup process, but some passengers may experience delays while checking in and passing through security. Passengers should still arrive for their normal check-in time, which is typically two hours ahead of the flight time for short-haul, and three hours for long-haul,” the airport said in a statement.

Australia’s Qantas said its flights were still operating with some delays.

Air New Zealand said it was dealing with a high number of customer calls and advised people to only contact customer service agents if they were due to fly within the next 48 hours. It said some customers would be experiencing payment issues, if they are customers of impacted banks.

Cathay Pacific said at 2:45 p.m. Hong Kong time (2:45 a.m. ET) that self-service check-in facilities at Hong Kong International Airport were not working.

“We ask all customers to check in online via our website or mobile app and obtain their mobile boarding pass before coming to the airport,” the airline said. It also advised that its flight booking service is currently unavailable.

— Jenni Reid

Television channel Sky News was temporarily unable to broadcast live this morning, citing a “global technical issue.”

David Rhodes, executive chairman of Sky News Group, said shortly after 9 a.m. London time that live broadcasting had been restored, but “without full capabilities.”

Sky News and CNBC’s parent organization, NBCUniversal, are both owned by Comcast.

— Jenni Reid

The Dutch arm of Air France-KLM said Friday it has been forced to suspend “most” of its operation due to a global computer outage.

The outage has made it “impossible to handle flights,” KLM said in a statement. “We realize that, especially given the summer vacations, this is extremely inconvenient for our customers. We are working hard to resolve the problem.”

Earlier Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport said a “global system failure at Microsoft” had disrupted flights to and from the airport. 

– April Roach

In an update at 8:55 a.m. U.K. time (3:55 a.m. ET), Microsoft 365 said on social platform X that “multiple services are continuing to see improvements in availability as our mitigation actions progress.”

According to a Microsoft web page tracking the status of its services, “users may be unable to access various Microsoft 365 apps and services.” Issues are affecting apps including Microsoft Fabric, Teams, Purview, Defender, SharePoint and OneNote, according to the tracker.

— Jenni Reid

Shares of tech titans CrowdStrike and Microsoft were losing ground in premarket trading, after both reported significant outages that rippled across businesses worldwide.

CrowdStrike stock was down 14.08% at 09:27 a.m. London time, with Microsoft shares lower by 2.12%.

— Ruxandra Iordache

London Stock Exchange Group on Friday said it is investigating technical issues after it was hit by a global IT outage affecting its pricing data and news communications.

In a notice on its website, LSEG said that it is “currently experiencing a 3rd party global technical issue, preventing news from being published on www.londonstockexchange.com.”

“Technical teams are working to restore the service. Other services across the Group, including London Stock Exchange continue to operate as normal,” the exchange group added.

LSEG’s Eikon data platform was also affected by technical issues Friday morning.

When logging into the platform, a notice at the top of the site reads: “We’re sorry for the inconvenience. You will need to restart workspace. If you need help, please contact us.”

LSEG was not immediately available to provide a comment when contacted by CNBC Friday.

Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike suffered a major outage on Friday, the company told NBC, impacting businesses globally.

The outage resulted from an issue with the latest update, the company said. CrowdStrike is now in the process of rolling back that update globally.

— Katrina Bishop

Microsoft’s cloud services have been restored after suffering an outage, the company said on Friday.

The U.S. tech giant said late on Thursday that customers in the Central U.S. region may experience issues with multiple Azure services and its Microsoft 365 suite of apps. This could include “failures with service management operations and connectivity or availability of services.”

On Friday, Microsoft said it determined the underlying cause and the majority of services were recovered. However, the company said that some customers may still experience issues in the region.

“A small subset of services is still experiencing residual impact,” Microsoft said.

Read the full story here.

— Arjun Kharpal