Microsoft IT outage sows chaos in the world, but not in Russia

On the morning of Friday, July 19, a large-scale breakdown occurred in the Windows operating system across the world. It caused major problems at airports, airlines, banks and medical systems. The problem did not affect Russia as Microsoft disconnected most Russian companies from the Azure cloud platform.

World's largest airlines announced a temporary suspension of flights. American Airlines, Delta Airlines, United Airlines and Allegiant Air canceled many of their flights, whereas Turkish Airlines advised customers that they may experience check-in and booking problems.

Sydney International Airport and Berlin Brandenburg Airport warned of longer wait times due to the IT outage. Edinburgh and Spain advised passengers that most transactions are being carried out manually.

The outage also affected hospitals, banks, TV channels and websites.

Microsoft said that services were gradually being restored after the failure. The preliminary cause of the breakdown is believed to be a security software update from CrowdStrike.

IT outage has not affected operation of airports and enterprises in Russia

The press service of Moscow's Domodedovo Airport reported that the IT outage did not affect the operation of the airport. The airport could switch to the Russian backup registration system Astra should the outage disrupt the operation of airport systems. Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport also reported that there were no problems in the work of its systems.

The Russian Ministry of Digital Development confirmed that there were no disruptions in the operation of enterprises across Russia.

"The situation with the global Microsoft IT outage has once again shown the importance of import substitution of foreign software, primarily at critical information infrastructure facilities,” the department said in a statement.

Problems first appeared in Australia

Australia was the first to sound the alarm when thousands of Windows devices went offline across the entire continent. The country's three largest airlines — Qantas, Jetstar and Virgin — were affected. The country's authorities were forced to convene an emergency meeting. American carriers reported problems soon afterwards. American Airlines, Delta Airlines, United Airlines and Allegiant Air reported flight cancellations.

British television company Sky News was forced to interrupt the broadcast of all of its programs and air a message with apologies instead.

London and Malaysian stock exchanges, British railway companies, New Zealand banks, hospitals, banks, post offices, emergency systems in Israel, emergency services in Alaska and even the organizing committee of the Olympic Games in Paris were also affected by the global IT outage.

Microsoft shares lost more than three percent of their value against the background of the global outage. Crowdstrike shares fell by 15 percent.

According to the Register, the breakdown in the work of Microsoft systems was caused by an error in an update of the Falcon program, which is responsible for countering cyber attacks. CrowdStrike's solution can be called an antivirus system for corporate users, which explains the insignificant number of problems with home computers.