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Picture: Microsoft’s offices in Issy-les-Moulineaux, near Paris, France. Picture REUTERS/GONZALO FUENTES
Picture: Microsoft’s offices in Issy-les-Moulineaux, near Paris, France. Picture REUTERS/GONZALO FUENTES

An outage of Microsoft’s systems on Friday, related to cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike, is a wake-up call about the vulnerability of private and public sector operations to faults caused by technology, as the failure wreaked havoc on businesses around the world.

The incident saw huge disruptions to banking, hospitality, broadcast and other services in SA. 

Around the world, the company, founded by billionaire Bill Gates, is systemic and important to both private and public sector organisations that use its operating systems, software packages and cloud services to run their operations. Among local companies, broadcaster eNCA and Capitec Bank were affected.

“We’re aware of an issue affecting Windows devices due to an update from a third-party software platform. We anticipate a resolution is forthcoming,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement sent to Business Day on Friday. 

By 11.50am on Friday, crowdsourced website Downdetector showed outages at a number of banks and telecom companies. For Capitec, people reported issues with mobile banking, online banking and ATMs. The site also noted problems with people trying to log into Microsoft’s services, server connections, Sharepoint, Teams and cloud service Azure.

People also reported issues with FNB, Standard Bank, Absa and Nedbank.

Television station eNCA padded its Friday morning offering with reruns and filler inserts, with a staff member confirming the glitch was linked to the worldwide IT problem which had also affected Sky News in the UK.

Capitec confirmed the issues, saying it experienced “significant disruptions across all our banking channels today due to a global downtime incident involving Crowdstrike, a key technology service provider. We recognise the inconvenience this has caused and wish to provide clarity and assurance to our valued clients.”

Since early on Friday, the bank said its clients had “faced difficulties accessing various banking services, including online banking, mobile app transactions and card payments. Our tech team has worked quickly to resolve the problem — we are pleased to report that all our banking has now been fully restored. Importantly, we want to reassure our clients that their bank accounts and personal data remain secure and unaffected by this incident.”

Error messages can be seen on computer screens at the Air Asia check-in counter, as airline staff appear to be checking passengers in using mobile phones instead at Don Mueang Domestic flight counter on July 20 2024 in Bangkok, Thailand. Picture: MAILEE OSTEN-TAN
Error messages can be seen on computer screens at the Air Asia check-in counter, as airline staff appear to be checking passengers in using mobile phones instead at Don Mueang Domestic flight counter on July 20 2024 in Bangkok, Thailand. Picture: MAILEE OSTEN-TAN

Rival Absa said in an X post it was aware of the global technology outage, and as a result the quality of some its services might have been affected.

According to cybersecurity firm Kaspersky, the update should not have been released on a Friday. “This is as per a rule that’s been known to all in the industry since the year dot: if an error occurs, there’s too little time to fix it before the weekend, so the system administrators at all companies affected need to work over the weekend to fix things.”

While the outages on Friday were not caused by a cyberattack, the incident does highlight the vulnerability of certain key systems.

The effect of a cyberattack incident on SA’s National Health Laboratory Services (NHLS) towards the end of June, causing widespread disruption, are still being felt by the institution, which reported on Friday that “the level of service at our facilities continues to improve”.

Unfortunately, facilities were still experiencing delays that were “beyond the normal and agreed turnaround times,” it said. NHLS has had to resort to using private facilitates to process certain tests during high volume times.

In the US, airlines grounded flights on Friday citing communications issues, while other carriers, media companies, banks and telecom firms around the world also reported that system outages were disrupting their operations.

American Airlines, Delta, United and Allegiant Air grounded flights less than an hour after Microsoft said it had resolved its cloud services outage that affected several low-cost carriers.

It was not immediately clear whether the call to keep flights from taking off were related to an earlier Microsoft cloud outage.

In Australia, media, banks and telecom companies suffered outages, which the government said appeared to be linked to Crowdstrike.

With TimesLIVE and Reuters 

gavazam@businesslive.co.za

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