MS Outage: All Impacted Apps, Services Recovered; Nadella Says Working With CrowdStrike

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the Windows outage was caused by a CrowdStrike update that began impacting the company's IT systems globally. He said Microsoft is working closely with CrowdStrike and across the industry to provide customers technical guidance and support to safely bring their systems back online.

Microsoft in its latest update said that the issue has been resolved and all the impacted apps and services have recovered. It added that it has entered a period of monitoring to ensure that the impact is fully recovered.

Microsoft in an update said that it is continuing to resolve the residual impact and monitoring the Microsoft 365 apps and services while they fully recover.

Microsoft outage has highlighted the need for data localisation as 80% of India's data is stored outside, Bhavish Aggarwal Founder and CMD at Ola said through a post on X formerly known as Twitter.

It's crucial for the government to acknowledge the risks of global data storage and implement stricter data localization policies to mitigate these concerns, he said.

He also said that outages are transient and unintentional, however, they could also result from deliberate actions by malicious actors.

The shares of CrowdStrike Holdings on Friday was trading 9.42% lower at $310.72 on Nasdaq as of 9:52 a.m. It had closed 3.35% down at $343.05 on Thursday.

However, the shares of Microsoft Corporation were trading 0.29% lower at $439.10 on Nasdaq as of 9:52 a.m. The shares had closed 0.71% lower at $440.37 on Thursday.

"Microsoft crash related outage should be a wakeup call," Madhabi Puri Buch, SEBI Chairperson, said at an event on Friday. She further added that she has been urging market infra institutions to look at cyber security in two-dimensional manner.

Assessing the impact of Microsoft Services outage on its Regulated Entities, the Reserve Bank of India said that only 10 banks and NBFCs had minor disruptions that have already been resolved. This was because only a few banks are using the CrowdStrike tool, and the critical systems of most banks are not in cloud.

The RBI has also issued an advisory to the Regulated Entities for taking necessary steps to remain alert

"The outages represents how fragile and interconnected our systems are. Companies like MSFT have great practices, and the fact that a bug passes through its process is unfortunate. It reiterates the need for good practices of testing before releasing new software to production systems," says Srirang Srikantha, Founder & CEO, Yethi Consulting.

Wipro faced no impact due to Microsoft outage, said Srini Pallia, Chief Executive Officer. He further added that the tech giant is reaching out to the clients that were affected due to the outage.

Maruti Suzuki resumes its production and dispatch operations after a brief halt on Thursday due to the global IT issue across the globe. The company in a regulatory filing said that it doesn't anticipate any material impact of this incident.

Microsoft in its latest update has said that the underlying cause has been fixed however some Microsoft 365 apps and services continue seeing residual impact.

"We're continuing to observe an increase in functionality and availability for the remaining impacted scenarios and we're monitoring this closely to ensure we're progressing towards full recovery," Microsoft added.

The Ministry Of Civil Aviation in collaboration with AAI have implemented a manual backup system in order to maintain operational continuity. Minister Rammohan Naidu has also instructed the airport authorities and airlines to provide extra seating, food and water to passengers that are affected by the delay.

"We have witnessed a limited impact, as our networks are built to minimise the effects of such outages on our ecosystem. We have deployed a software patch in our back office and settlement functions and reported the same to the exchanges”, said a Nuvama Spokesperson.

"It is a black swan event that I have never seen before," says Rajeev Chandrasekhar Former Minister of State for Electronics and IT. Chandrasekhar further added that Microsoft is a big name and is slowly recovering from this.

"It is clear now that it is the CrowdStrike cybersecurity agent that was at fault" and it has caused great inconvenience and losses to businesses and consumers he added.

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said, "The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed." He further clarified that the issue is not a security incident or cyberattack.

Bengaluru International Airport Ltd. said a global outage with the Navitaire Departure Control System has been affecting operations of some airlines across their network since Friday morning.

Indigo, Akasa, SpiceJet and Air India Express were among the impacted airlines.

Microsoft outage has led to login issues at Edelweiss Mutual Fund, the fund house said in a statement. The issue is being resolved, it said.

The CrowdStrike glitch which led to a global Microsoft outage has "opened up corporate networks of some of the world's largest organisations to hackers and other players with malicious intent," Sanchit Vir Gogia, Chief Analyst, Founder & CEO, Greyhound Research, told NDTV Profit.

Considered the "gold standard' in its segment, CrowdStrike is being used across end-points and servers by some of the world's top brands. "Any breach of this nature has an immediate business impact and potential cybersecurity threats that could stretch into months," Gogia said.

Given how this product works across cloud environments, the impact is bigger than a typical outage at a single cloud service provider, he said.

The systems of State Bank of India have not been affected by Microsoft outage, said chairman Dinesh Kumar Khara.

Source: PTI

Tata-owned Air India also faced technical glitches due to the Microsoft global outage, a statement from the airline said.

MeitY's Indian Computer Emergency Response Team has noted outage of Microsoft Windows due to CrowdStrike agent Falcon Sensor update.

Issues occurred in the latest update of CrowdStrike and changes have been reverted by the CrowdStrike Team.

Source: Government advisory

The Indian government is in contact with Microsoft Inc. and its associates following a global outage, Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said.

Government IT services provider NIC is unaffected from the outage, he said.

Microsoft says multiple services are improving as mitigation actions progress.

India's oldest stock exchange said that the Microsoft outage did not impact the day-to-day functioning of the exchange.

A spokesperson for BSE Ltd. said the stock exchange hasn’t been impacted. Calls and texts to the National Stock Exchange remained unanswered as of publishing this story.

Meanwhile, The LSE Group, which operates the London stock exchange, said it’s experiencing a global technical issue preventing news from being published.

The Microsoft outage, which disrupted airlines, banks and stock exchanges across the world, has affected Indian brokerages as well.

Users NDTV Profit spoke with complained of technical glitches on online broking platforms, including 5Paisa, Angel One and Groww. Their mobile apps were glitchy, users said.

“Due to a global outage with Crowdstrike/Microsoft, offering a cybersecurity solution, our systems are affected. Our team is working closely with both of them to restore our systems as soon as possible,” 5Paisa said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

Microsoft Azure is restored and no issues are detected at present, according Microsoft.  

The cloud service outage has triggered disruptions across business in the world. Major airlines in India, including IndiGo, Spicejet, and Akasa Air, have been hit as well, leading to delays and glitches in their operations.

Budget carrier, IndiGo took to X, formerly Twitter, to inform passengers about the impact of the outage on their systems. "Our systems are currently impacted by a Microsoft outage, which is also affecting other companies. During this time, booking, check-in, access to your boarding pass, and some flights may be impacted. We appreciate your patience," it said.

Microsoft Corp. on Friday reported an outage across its online services that had its toll on airlines, banks, brokerages and exchanges globally.

The latest failures came right after Microsoft said it had resolved an Azure cloud services outage. The company’s status pages had earlier showed Azure and Microsoft 365 experienced problems for several hours.

The issue, originating from Windows Blue Screen of Death errors globally, has affected various industries due to disruptions in Microsoft 365 services.

The widespread outage has triggered disruptions across business in the world. Major airlines in India, including IndiGo, Spicejet, and Akasa Air, have been hit as well, leading to delays and glitches in their operations.