Updated / Both UK and Australian versions of Sky News were taken off air in a global IT outage that’s affected banks, airlines, supermarkets and other media organisations.
- Outage linked to problems with Microsoft systems and a security update by Crowdstrike.
- Sky News put up message apologising “for the interruption to this broadcast”
Sky News became the first high-profile UK victim of a global IT problem on Friday affecting Microsoft customers.
The channel was abruptly thrown off air in the early hours after global issues with Microsoft-based services, later traced to a third-party security update.
Sky News Breakfast presenters took to social media to apologise for the loss of service. The Australian version of Sky News, which operates under different ownership, was also affected for a time.
The static apology slate, pictured above, was being watched on the Sky News YouTube stream by over 4,000 viewers at 8:30am on Friday morning.
Sky News was able to return on air later in the morning. It was still able to publish updates on its website during the outage.
Since then, reports of disruption affecting other UK organisations, including the NHS, have been reported.
What happened?
Reports of problems affecting Microsoft’s cloud-based platforms including Azure and 365 began to emerge in central parts of the USA, late Thursday, according to The Register.
The problem then spread globally. In Australia, which was in the middle of its working day, numerous institutions were impacted, shutting down TV broadcasts, banks, supermarkets and grounding airlines. Australia’s public broadcaster, the ABC, battled with the blue screen of death on its computer terminals.
As Europe woke up, the impact here became apparent, with Berlin’s airport closing temporarily and various airlines grounding flights.
Microsoft said it was continuing to address what it called the “lingering impact” of the problems to its 365 applications. It added that its services are in a “degraded state”.
Later on Friday, security firm Crowdstrike admitted its security update was to blame for taking systems down. It has apologised for the problems.
By: Marc Thornham | Image: Screengrab – Sky News | Updated 12:10, 13:54 and 15:28