Global: A major tech outage on Friday caused widespread disruptions across multiple sectors, including airlines, broadcasters, banking, and healthcare services. The cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike has been addressing issues related to a defect found in a Microsoft Windows update, which has been identified as a contributing factor to the outages.
Recent Tech Outages and Their Impact
British Airways – May 2017
In May 2017, British Airways faced a significant computer system failure that stranded 75,000 passengers over a holiday weekend. The disruption, caused by a maintenance contractor accidentally switching off power, led to substantial public relations challenges for the airline.
Alphabet – December 2020
Google services, including YouTube, Gmail, and Google Drive, were down for an hour on December 14, 2020. This outage impacted over 12,000 YouTube users globally, with significant effects in the United States, Britain, and India.
Fastly – June 2021
A widespread outage in June 2021, linked to U.S.-based cloud company Fastly, affected thousands of government, news, and social media websites worldwide. High-traffic sites like Reddit, Amazon, CNN, PayPal, Spotify, and the New York Times experienced disruptions lasting from a few minutes to an hour.
Akamai – June 2021
On June 17, 2021, server-related issues at content delivery network provider Akamai caused brief outages for websites of numerous financial institutions and airlines in Australia and the United States. The problem was traced back to a bug in the firm’s software.
Meta – October 2021
Meta-owned platforms Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram were inaccessible for six hours on October 4, 2021. The outage, affecting 10.6 million users worldwide, resulted from a faulty configuration change.
X Corp – December 2022
Twitter, now known as X Corp, experienced a major outage on December 28, 2022. Tens of thousands of users globally were unable to access the platform or use its features for several hours. Downdetector reported over 10,000 affected users in the U.S., about 2,500 in Japan, and 2,500 in the UK at the peak of the disruption.
Current Situation
The recent global tech outage has highlighted the vulnerability of essential services to technical failures. Airlines like Indigo and SpiceJet have reported significant operational disruptions. Indigo noted the impact on booking, check-in, and access to boarding passes, while SpiceJet mentioned technical issues in providing updates on flight disruptions.
Airports, including Delhi Airport, reported temporary impacts on services. “Due to the global IT issue, some of the services at the Delhi Airport were temporarily impacted. We are closely working with all our stakeholders to minimise the inconvenience to our flyers,” stated Delhi Airport officials.
As industries rely heavily on digital infrastructure, these outages underscore the critical need for robust cybersecurity measures and contingency plans to mitigate the impact of such disruptions.
