Airlines, governments and businesses rush to get back on track after global tech disruptions

Transport providers, businesses, hospitals and governments were scrambling Saturday to get their systems back online after long outages in the wake of the Widespread technology outage.

The biggest ongoing impact has been on air travel. Airlines canceled thousands of flights Friday, with many of their planes and crews now in the wrong places, while airports are experiencing ongoing issues with check-in and security procedures. At around 10:30 p.m. ET on Saturday, the flight tracking service FlightAware reported that check-in services were down. amphitheater More than 33,000 flight delays on its website, and more than 2,700 cancellations.

American Airlines and United Airlines said Saturday that most of their operations were back up and running.

At the heart of the massive turmoil is CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity company that provides software to dozens of companies around the worldThe company says the problem occurred when it rolled out a faulty update to computers running Microsoft Windows, noting that the outage was not a security incident or cyberattack.

The Microsoft outage caused by the CrowdStrike software update also brought back a familiar—and scary—screen for many Windows users: what has become unofficially known as “Blue Screen of Death,” Indicating that their computer systems are down.

Microsoft said 8.5 million Windows devices were affected by the outage, which affected consumers and businesses around the world, including airlines, banks, healthcare providers, telecom companies, retailers and even billboards in New York City’s Times Square.

in A post published on Saturday morningMicrosoft said it partnered with CrowdStrike to automate work on developing a solution, share instructions on how to address the issue and deploy “hundreds of Microsoft engineers and experts to work directly with customers to restore services,” among other steps to keep people informed and help affected customers.

“We currently estimate that the CrowdStrike update affected 8.5 million Windows devices, or less than one percent of all Windows PCs,” David Weston, Microsoft’s chief cybersecurity officer, said in a blog post.

“Although the percentage was small, the wide-ranging economic and social impacts reflect the use of CrowdStrike by companies that operate many critical services.”

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Germany warns of scams after major IT outage

BERLIN – Many companies are still suffering from the consequences of a widespread technology outage, the German government’s IT security agency says.

“A number of business processes and procedures have been disrupted due to a computer system outage,” the British Standards Agency said on its website.

But the agency also said on Saturday that many affected areas had returned to normal.

It warned that cybercriminals were trying to exploit the situation through phishing, fake websites and other scams, and that “unofficial” software code was in circulation.

The agency said it was not yet clear how the flawed code made its way into the CrowdStrike software update blamed for causing the outage.

Austrian doctors’ group calls for better protection of patient data

In Austria, a leading medical organisation said the global IT outage had exposed the vulnerability of digitally-based health systems.

“Yesterday’s incidents underline how important it is for hospitals to have analog backups” to protect patient care, Harald Meyer, vice president of the Austrian Chamber of Physicians, said in a statement on the organization’s website.

The organization called on governments to impose high standards for the protection and security of patient data, and called on health care providers to train staff and put in place crisis management systems.

“Fortunately, where there were problems, they remained small and short-lived, and many areas of care were not affected” in Austria, Meyer said.

Britain’s transport system is still trying to get back on track

LONDON – Britain’s travel and transport industry is struggling to get back on schedule after the global security disruption as airline passengers face cancellations and delays on the first day of the summer holidays for many schoolchildren.

Gatwick Airport said the “majority” of scheduled flights were due to depart. Manchester Airport said passengers were being checked in manually and there could be last-minute cancellations.

The port of Dover said it was seeing an influx of stranded airline passengers, waiting for hours to enter the port to board ferries to France.

Meanwhile, the UK’s National Cyber ​​Security Centre has warned people and businesses to beware of phishing attempts, as “opportunistic malicious actors” try to take advantage of the outage.

The worst of the crisis is over, said Ciaran Martin, former head of the National Cyber ​​Security Centre, “because the nature of the crisis is that it went very wrong very quickly. It was detected very quickly and was essentially stopped.”

He told Sky News that some companies would be able to return to normal very quickly, but for sectors such as aviation it would take longer.

“If you’re in aviation, you’re going to have people, aircraft, employees stuck in the wrong places… so we’re looking at days. I’d be surprised if we were to expect it to take weeks.”

European airports appear to be getting closer to normal.

LONDON – Heathrow Airport, Europe’s busiest, said it was operating normally on Saturday. “All systems are back up and passengers are continuing their journeys smoothly,” the airport said in a statement.

Some 167 flights due to leave UK airports on Friday were cancelled, while 171 flights due to leave by road were cancelled.

Meanwhile, the German news agency (dpa) quoted a spokesman for Berlin airport as saying that flights were departing on or close to schedule.

Nineteen flights took off in the early hours of Saturday morning, after authorities exempted them from the usual ban on night flights.

150 of the 552 scheduled incoming and outgoing flights at the airport were cancelled on Friday due to an IT network outage, disrupting the plans of thousands of passengers at the start of the summer holiday season in the German capital.

Delta Air Lines and its regional subsidiaries have canceled hundreds of flights.

DALLAS — Delta Air Lines Inc. and its regional affiliates had canceled more than a quarter of their East Coast flight schedule by mid-afternoon Friday, aviation data firm Cirium reported.

More than 1,100 flights have been canceled by Delta and its affiliates. About 40% of the airline’s mainline flights were delayed as of noon Saturday, with another 25% canceled. About 40% of regional flights were canceled, according to FlightAware, with Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Georgia remaining the epicenter of the disruption.

About half of United Airlines’ flights were delayed as of Saturday afternoon, with another 15 percent canceled. Houston, the airline’s home airport, is experiencing the worst delays.

American Airlines has canceled 450 flights, or 7.5% of its schedule, and is looking at Saturday as a recovery day.

Southwest and Alaska do not use the CrowdStrike program that caused a global internet outage and led to the cancellation of fewer than a half-dozen flights each.

How are healthcare systems coping with the crisis?

Health care systems affected by the outage faced clinic closures, cancelled surgeries and appointments, and restricted access to patient records.

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles said it was making “steady progress” to get its servers back online and thanked its patients for their flexibility during the crisis.

“Our teams will be working actively throughout the weekend as we continue to resolve remaining issues in preparation for the start of the work week,” the hospital wrote in a statement. statement.

In Austria, a leading doctors’ organisation said the outage exposed the weaknesses of relying on digital systems. Harald Meyer, vice president of the Austrian Chamber of Physicians, said the outage showed that hospitals needed analogue backups to protect patient care.

The organization also called on governments to impose high standards for the protection and security of patient data, and called on health care providers to train staff and put in place crisis management systems.

“Fortunately, where there were problems, they remained small and short-lived, and many areas of care were not affected” in Austria, Meyer said.

Schleswig-Holstein University Hospital in northern Germany, which cancelled all elective surgeries on Friday, said on Saturday that systems were gradually returning to work and that elective surgeries could resume by Monday.

Portland, Oregon mayor declares state of emergency due to power outage

PORTLAND, Ore. — Mayor Ted Wheeler declared a state of emergency Friday after more than half of the city’s computer systems were affected by a global internet outage.

While emergency calls were not interrupted, emergency personnel had to manually track emergency calls with pen and paper for several hours, Wheeler said at a news conference. He said 266 of the city’s 487 computer systems were affected.

Border crossings into the United States are delayed.

SAN DIEGO — People trying to enter the United States from both the north and south found their border crossings delayed by internet outages.

The San Isidro port of entry was packed with traffic Friday morning as pedestrians waited for three hours to cross, According to the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Even cars carrying people approved for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s “Trusted Traveler” program for low-risk passengers waited up to 90 minutes. The program, known as SENTRI, moves passengers through customs and passport control more quickly if they schedule an interview and undergo a background check to travel through customs and passport control more quickly when they arrive in the United States.

Meanwhile, on the U.S.-Canada border, Windsor police reported long delays at crossings at the Ambassador Bridge and the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel.