Global tech outage: Vital NHS system goes down along with Heathrow, London Stock Exchange and Sky News
The London Stock Exchange, airlines, banks and media organisations went down in the early hours of Friday.
Online systems around the world are crashing in what appears to be a global technical crash.
The London Stock Exchange’s RNS Service, airlines, telecoms companies, banks and media organisations went down in the early hours of Friday, reportedly due to an update issue with cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike that caused Microsoft 365 and Azure services to fail.
Crowdstrike boss George Kurtz has said the company understands the gravity of the situation and is “deeply sorry for the inconvenience and disruption.”
Trading continues to operate as normal on the London Stock Exchange. It said it is “working on resolving this issue as soon as possible and will continue to provide updates to our customers.”
Some airlines including Ryanair have reported disruption, with many flights grounded and, in the UK, railway companies are experiencing “widespread IT issues”.
It has also been reported that GP services across the country have been hit as a vital NHS booking system has collapsed.
Heathrow airport is still operating but some of its systems have been hit by the outage. A spokesperson said: “Microsoft is currently experiencing a global outage which is impacting select systems at Heathrow.
“Flights are operational and we are implementing contingency plans to minimise any impact on journeys. Passengers are advised to check with their airline for the latest flight information.”
Stansted Airport has said some retail payment machine services have been impacted but “are slowly coming back online, and cash/pdq payments being taken in the meantime.” Some airline check-in services are being done manually, it added.
In India, one traveller reported that airlines are resorting to hand-written boarding passes.
