A major widespread technology outage disrupted flights, banking services, and media outlets on Friday, affecting companies and services globally. This highlighted the reliance on software from a small number of providers.
Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said that the issue believed to be behind the outage was not a security incident or cyberattack.
Shipping companies United Parcel Service (UPS) and FedEx are warning customers that they could encounter service delays due to the global IT outage that affected their systems on Friday.
“At this time, our airline continues to operate effectively and our drivers are on the roads delivering for customers,” UPS said in its statement. “We are continuing to work to resolve all issues as quickly as possible; there may be some service delays.”
FedEx said it instituted its contingency plans to deal with the issues.
“We are working diligently to lessen any impact on service, and we appreciate our customers’ patience,” FedEx said.
Leaders warned that future outages similar to the Microsoft incident are inevitable due to the growing complexity of interconnected digital networks and the increasing number of connected devices. Efforts to improve resilience and redundancy may not fully prevent such disruptions, underlining the need for innovative infrastructure management, cybersecurity, and disaster recovery planning to reduce the impact on businesses and individuals globally.
“The important part is how we learn from them and how we improve the resilience of our systems, so that similar issues do not happen again,” Andrew Sullivan, CEO of the nonprofit Internet Society said Friday to the Associated Press.
The outages caused chaos for flights, banks, media outlets and companies worldwide, leading to frustration. Sulivan assured the public that there was no loss of connectivity and that data had continued to flow smoothly.
“This was a failure of some systems using a specific operating system and a specific vendor’s management tools,” Sullivan said. “Unfortunately, those systems were used widely and for many functions critical to people’s daily lives.”
This is a developing story.
