Major US airlines have today (Friday 19 July) grounded planes following communications issues, while major global media companies, telecommunication companies and banks have reported a significant IT outage.
Thousands of Windows machines have experienced a “Blue Screen of Death”, forcing Allegiant Air, Delta Airlines, United Airlines and American Airlines to ground flights.
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A faulty update from cybersecurity company CrowdStrike has admitted responsibility for the global outage.
Sky News’s morning show was taken off air and reports on social media have suggested issues with making payments in UK bakery chain Gail’s, among other global retailers.
The Australian Government said confirmed an issue with CrowdStrike had led to outages at media companies, banks and telecom providers.
Amazon Web Services said that it was “investigating reports of connectivity issues to Windows EC2 instances and Workspaces within AWS”.
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By GlobalDataHowever, AWS services and network connectivity were “not affected by this event and continued to operate normally,” the company said.
In Spain, all of its airports reported a “computer incident”.
Ryanair, the largest airline in Europe, said that disruptions would affect “all airlines operating across the network”.
Adam Pilton, senior cybersecrity consultant at CyberSmart and a former Detective Sergeant investigating cybercrime, said that there is currently “no suggestion that this is a cyberattack”.
“What we are seeing now though are the businesses which have business continuity and incident response plans in place. These businesses are effectively communicating the issues and ensuring their customers are informed,” Pilton said.
“Society is dependent upon technology and this is why we must have both technical and non-technical controls in place to protect us when issues arise, whether malicious or not,” he added.
Pilton said this is why businesses “must plan and prepare” and highlights how “a huge dependency on individual suppliers can take down supply chains”.
Al Lakhani, CEO of multifactor authentication company IDEE, said that the incident “underscores the importance of businesses thoroughly researching and vetting their cybersecurity solutions before implementation”.
“Microsoft clearly fell short in this regard, and we are witnessing a cascade of operational failures around the world as a result,” Lakhani said.
“The lesson here is blindingly obvious: investing in cybersecurity is not just about acquiring the latest or most popular tools but ensuring those tools are reliable and resilient,” he added.
