Microsoft outage: Bank, airport, media outlet services hit globally

New Delhi: Millions of Windows users across the globe are experiencing the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) error which is causing the system to suddenly shut down or restart. Microsoft in a message said that the error is being caused due to a recent CrowdStrike update.

Microsoft said its outage started with a subset of its customers experiencing issues with multiple Azure services in the Central US region.

Microsoft Cloud outage has affected millions of computer systems worldwide. Users have report sudden shutdown or restart of their systems which Microsoft said is due to a recent CrowdStrike update. As per Microsoft’s Service Health Status updates, the preliminary root cause is “a configuration change in a portion of our Azure backend workloads (that has) caused interruption between storage and compute resources, and which (has) resulted in connectivity failures.” This has affected “downstream (and dependent) Microsoft 365 services”, the company said.

Police in the US state of Alaska are saying that many 911 and non-emergency call centres are not working correctly.

“Due to a nationwide technology-related outage, many 911 and non-emergency call centers are not working correctly across the State of Alaska. If you have an emergency and 911 is not working in your area, you can call the following phone numbers directly,” it wrote in a post on Facebook.

Azure is a cloud computing platform that provides services for building, deploying, and managing applications and services.

Separately, Microsoft said it was investigating an issue impacting various Microsoft 365 apps and services.

A number of Indian airlines including Indigo, Akasa Air, Air India Express and Spicejet were all said to be facing technical glitches around booking tickets and web check-in.

Microsoft 365 service posted an official update on X saying, “We’re investigating an issue impacting users ability to access various Microsoft 365 apps and services”.

Indigo informed customers that systems “across the network” were affected resulting in “increased wait times at our contact centres and airports”. Akasa Air has issued a similar alert warning that automated options to manage existing bookings were down. Spice Jet has also sent out a warning in the same vein.

Currently, affected airlines are doing manual check-ins and boarding processes at the airports.

A Reuters report shared that the London Stock Exchange had suffered an outage while a major low-cost U.S. airline called Frontier Airlines had to temporarily ground their flights because of the issue.