A global IT outage has taken Sky News off air and also impacted airports, trains and GPs.
The cause of the issue is not yet known, but Microsoft said it was taking “mitigation actions.” It said that the problem first appeared at around 11pm last night and added that it was investigating issues with cloud services and a problem impacting a number of its apps and services.
We're investigating an issue impacting users ability to access various Microsoft 365 apps and services. More info posted in the admin center under MO821132 and on https://t.co/W5Y8dAkjMk
— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) July 18, 2024
Cybersecurity firm, Crowdstrike also suffered a “major outage” on Thursday night. This was related to an issue with its latest update and it was in process of rolling this back globally.
It’s not yet been confirmed whether this is linked to the Microsoft outage, although a spokesperson from CrowdStrike told US broadcasters that it was “aware of reports of crashes on Windows hosts related to the Falcon Sensor.”
The Falcon Sensor is part of the software which blocks attacks on systems, which it believes to be a threat, and also captures and records activity as it happens.
In the UK, Edinburgh airport said that there was disruption as departure screens were malfunctioning, appearing to freeze and also showing out-of-date information. That meant some passengers missed their flights.
While Manchester Airport hasn’t been hit, it has affected Swissport, which is one of the airport’s ground handling companies. It means certain flights are having to be manually checked in.
There is likely to be a knock-on affect as 3 major US airlines issued a “global ground stop” on all their flights, meaning no more flights will take off for the moment.
A number of London train services have been impacted, as has TransPennine Express. The Sky News Channel and CBBC have been unable to broadcast for much of this morning.
Some business are unable to take payments, including Manchester United, which has delayed its ticket release.
🚨Unfortunately, due to a global Microsoft Servers outage which is affecting many systems, including ours, this morning’s ticket release will be postponed until midday.
— Manchester United Matchday (@ManUtdMatchday) July 19, 2024
The website will also remain unavailable until the issue is resolved. Further updates will be provided here,…
There are also reports of GP systems going down, due to IT issues impacting Leeds-based EMIS:
All practices in the UK using the NHS commissioned GP computer system EMIS are currently without access to their IT systems. This is beyond the control of GP surgeries. Please bear with us until we have our IT systems back online.
— Wilmslow Health Centre (@WilmslowHealth) July 19, 2024
The London Stock Exchange said that while it was operating as normal, there were issues with its RNS (regulatory news service).
“RNS news service is currently experiencing a third party global technical issue, preventing news from being published on www.londonstockexchange.com,” it said in a statement.
