Microsoft outage: 6 industries affected by the CrowdStrike update fail

Editor’s note: Check out our oft-updated live blog for all new developments about the Microsoft/CrowdStrike outage.

Windows PCs around the entire planet crashed this morning because of a CrowdStrike update glitch. You may have heard about it.

But what you may not have heard about is just how many services have been affected by the biggest global IT outage in years. It’s not quite a Y2K level of apocalyptic meltdown, but everything from airline travel to broadcasting, 911 calls, and even surgeries, have been troubled by the CrowdStrike outage.

Here is just a partial list of things that have been brought down by the CrowdStrike glitch.

Airlines

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Perhaps one of the most striking sectors to be disrupted by the CrowdStrike outage was the airline industry. Flights were grounded globally on Friday morning, with major U.S. airlines like Delta and Allegiant halting operations alongside airlines from countries like France, Spain, Australia, and India.

911 calls

Many public and private sector services rely on Windows machines for basic infrastructure and tasks — and the CrowdStrike outage has revealed that 911 emergency dispatchers are no exception.

Emergency call services went down in places like Alaska and Ohio, with local authorities releasing lists of alternative phone numbers citizens can use instead. Weirdly, in Alaska, 911 was still working in Anchorage, the state’s biggest city, even while the system was down in the rest of the state.

Hospitals

Medical systems around the world also suffered as CrowdStrike’s update glitch brought Windows PCs down on Friday morning. Bloomberg reported that British hospitals were having trouble pulling up important patient data, while New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center had to actually delay the start of any surgical procedures that use anesthesia.

One French hospital had employees manually direct patients to appointments because the check-in process was busted. Interestingly, Pittsburgh’s UPMC healthcare provider claimed very few of its Windows devices had problems and there were no disruptions.

Stock markets

While one might expect a massive Microsoft-linked IT outage to have an effect on Microsoft’s stock price, the outage actually temporarily prevented stocks from being traded at all in some places. For instance, the London stock exchange had to delay the start of trading on Friday morning.

Because companies runs different systems, many remained unaffected, including the the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, which got up and running on Friday without any issues.

TV broadcasts

Obviously, TV broadcasting requires lots of computing technology, and with the global popularity of Windows, the CrowdStrike outage was sure to affect at least some networks.

One of the most prominent was the U.K.’s Sky News, which went off the air for a bit on Friday due to the Windows outage. Multiple TV channels in France were also hit, with one being unable to display weather information for viewers due to the technical difficulties. Here in the U.S., NBC News and MSNBC had temporary problems due to CrowdStrike, as have several smaller local networks around the country, per Adweek.

Times Square

Lastly (and perhaps of least importance), Times Square in New York City went dark on Friday morning because, you guessed it, the big screens displaying advertisements in the area run on Windows.

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