Many Devices Restored Following Global Outage, Reports CrowdStrike
CrowdStrike stated it was also testing a new technique to reboot systems more rapidly, amid warnings from experts that a full recovery from Friday’s IT failure could take weeks.
On Friday, thousands of flights were canceled, broadcasters were forced off the air, healthcare appointments were disrupted, and millions of PCs failed to start after a CrowdStrike software update inadvertently crippled devices using the Microsoft Windows operating system.
CrowdStrike wrote in a social media update that it had made progress in fixing the consequences of a glitch that, according to one expert, had caused “the largest IT outage in history.”
“Of the approximately 8.5 million Windows devices that were impacted, a significant number are back online and operational,” the US company said.
CrowdStrike added that it was testing a new method to “accelerate impacted system remediation” and was working to provide companies and organizations with access to that technique.
On Sunday, Australia’s home affairs minister said CrowdStrike was “close to rolling out an automatic fix to the issue with their update, as is Microsoft.”
On Friday, experts had warned that repairs to affected PCs would have to be carried out manually, potentially prolonging the recovery.
In the US, more than 1,500 flights were canceled for the third successive day on Sunday, with Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines particularly struggling, while in the UK, 45 flights were canceled on Saturday.
Delta’s chief executive, Ed Bastian, said the problem had affected a critical application in its IT system. “In particular, one of our crew tracking-related tools was affected and unable to effectively process the unprecedented number of changes triggered by the system shutdown,” he told customers.
In the UK, NHS England warned of delays as healthcare services recovered from the outage. It said patients with appointments this week should continue to attend unless told otherwise.
The British Medical Association said on Sunday that normal GP services could not be resumed immediately after the IT problems caused a considerable backlog.
An NHS spokesperson said: “Systems are now back online… Thanks to the hard work of NHS staff throughout this incident, we are hoping to keep further disruption to a minimum. However, there still may be some delays as services recover, particularly with GPs needing to rebook appointments, so please bear with us.
