Global IT outage: 24 hours later and impacts are still being seen across the world

Just 24 hours after the CrowdStrike outage sparked global chaos with airline, bank and other disruptions, many businesses appear to have recovered, but the issue has not been fully resolved and impacts are still being seen.

It was in the early morning hours on Friday when reports started coming in that a tech outage was beginning to knock services offline across the globe, a cascading effect that would impact millions.

Flights were grounded. Financial services disrupted. Hospital systems were knocked offline. That was the scene that played out Friday as businesses worked to get systems operational again.

The outage came from a faulty software update sent to computers running Microsoft Windows by a cybersecurity firm called CrowdStrike.

In an update Friday night, the company said they were "actively working with customers impacted" by the issue.

For air travel on Saturday in the United States, there are already at least 895 cancelled flights, far fewer than the 2,500 that happened on Friday but still enough that airlines are still trying to recover from.

Hospital systems like Mass General Brigham, who halted elective and non-emergency surgeries yesterday, said they would be working through the night to be fully operational on Saturday.

"We are doing everything possible to restore the electronic systems that support our patient care delivery across our system. Our teams will continue to work throughout the night to implement solutions and, at this time, we expect to be operational on Saturday, July 20, 2024," Mass General Brigham said in a statement late Friday.