Hospitals across the US cancel surgeries
Hospitals and medical centers across the United States are refusing to admit patients in the wake of today’s global IT issues.
Harris Health Quentin Meese Health Center in Houston announced it was canceling all elective procedures and outpatient appointments, while Massachusetts General Hospital Brigham in Boston said “all previously scheduled non-urgent surgeries, procedures and consultations are canceled today.”
“A major global software outage is affecting many systems at Massachusetts General Hospital – Brigham, as well as many other major companies across the country,” the Boston hospital said in a statement.
Massachusetts General Hospital assured the public that it would “continue to care for all patients currently receiving treatment at our hospital.”
The University of Miami Health System said its facilities are open but warned there could be delays because computer records are not available.
Meet CrowdStrike, the global technology disruption powerhouse
A flaw in an update issued by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has had a cascading effect on IT systems around the world, causing outages in a range of industries from banking to airlines.
Businesses around the world have suffered sustained power outages, banks and healthcare services have been disrupted, television stations have been taken offline and air travel has been hit hard, with planes grounded and services delayed.
So what really happened? CNBC takes a look.
Read the full CNBC article here.
More than half of flights across the US were delayed or canceled by 8 a.m. ET due to an IT outage affecting companies around the world, according to FlightAware data.
Photos: Power outages cause chaos at airports from Bangkok to Berlin
An airline employee holds up a sign to guide travelers as they queue at the check-in counters at Hong Kong International Airport this morning.
Crowds gather at Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, Thailand.
Staff at Berlin airport are trying to update passengers as a widespread power outage causes chaos.
CrowdStrike CEO apologizes but warns recovery ‘may take some time’
George Kurtz, president and CEO of CrowdStrike, the company at the center of today’s major IT outage, said the problems could continue for some time yet.
“It may take some time for some systems to recover because they’re not going to recover automatically,” Kurtz said on NBC’s “Today” show this morning.
Kurtz said the company “deeply apologizes for the impact this has had on our customers, travelers and all those affected by this,” adding that the issue has been resolved by the company.
“Many customers have rebooted their systems and the issue is being resolved. We have fixed it on our side and the issue will be resolved,” he said. “We are still trying to figure out what went wrong” with the buggy update that affected Windows PCs.
Experts warn restoring services won’t be easy
A Microsoft cloud-computing outage that has caused outages at airports, shops and broadcasting stations may not be easily fixed, technology experts have warned.
Omar Grossman, chief information officer at cybersecurity firm CyberArk, told CNBC that fixing the issue may require manual effort on the part of users.
“We found that because the endpoints were crashing – blue screens – we couldn’t update them remotely and had to fix the issue manually on each endpoint. We expect this process to take several days,” he said.
The global IT outage has had a “profound impact” and is unlike anything ever seen before, Satnam Narang, senior staff researcher at Tenable, told CNBC today.
“The impact is huge, and we’re just starting to see it at this point,” Narang said. Companies and organizations are trying to address the impact of the problem, and efforts are underway to find a solution, but it will take time, Narang said.
“We’ve never seen anything like this before, it’s completely unprecedented.”
Morning commuters faced disruption due to IT outage
Commuters who travel by bus or train in New York will have to listen carefully to station announcements after a power outage took the MTA’s systems offline.
“Train and bus services will not be affected,” the Met said in a statement this morning.
Washington’s transportation agency, WMATA, said train departure times would be delayed until 5 a.m. and commuters could experience further delays on buses and trains.
Passengers faced blue screens early in the morning at Newark Airport
A traveler walks past a departure board with a blue error screen at Newark International Airport this morning.
New Hampshire 911 service restored after outage
The New Hampshire Department of Safety announced that 911 services were back online early today after an interruption related to a global outage of Microsoft’s cloud computing services that began around 1:00 a.m. ET.
“The 911 server system has been fully restored and emergency calls to 911 are being processed normally,” the police emergency services and communications unit said in an update, confirming that service had been restored as of 3 a.m.
The company said the cause of the outage was under investigation but that the agency was “aware of reports of information technology outages across the country,” and urged people not to make “test calls” to see if 911 was working.
Massive computer outage may affect 911 services, but ‘not a cyberattack’
NBC News business and data reporter Brian Chung explained that CrowdStrike is rolling out a fix for the computer outages around the world, and he said people shouldn’t call 911 to test the system.
