SINGAPORE: Singapore's Changi Airport said on Saturday (Jul 20) morning that check-in operations have returned to normal for most airlines affected by Friday's IT outage that affected businesses globally.
Airlines were forced to implement manual check-ins at Changi and airports around the world after a software update by cybersecurity company CrowdStrike brought down computer systems running on the Microsoft Windows operating system.
In a Facebook post on Saturday morning, Changi Airport said a small number of airlines still required manual check-ins.
Mrs Josephine Teo, Singapore's Minister for Digital Development and Information, called the outage "serious and concerning".
"My team has been working through the night to support companies in Singapore whose services to the public were affected by the outages," said Mrs Teo in a Facebook post on Saturday afternoon. "Our immediate priority was to help them recover, and I am glad that most of these services are back to normal."
Her comments follow a statement by her ministry stating most companies affected by the outage had restored their services to the public as of 6am on Saturday.
"These include airline check-in services, newspapers, radio and postal services," said the Ministry for Digital Development and Information, adding that it was closely monitoring the situation and would provide assistance to the companies if needed.
Mrs Teo also said that as the situation unfolded worldwide, it was "clear the impact on Singapore, while concerning, was not the worst that could have been".
She noted that essential and government services were mostly unaffected and some of the services that were disrupted, such as postal services, recovered relatively quickly as business continuity plans were activated.
"While we were less impacted, it will be unwise to think that we are more resilient than others," she said.
"Although experts have so far ruled out the likelihood that cyber attacks caused these outages, the point remains valid - we must always plan for recovery and be able to implement those plans swiftly when needed," she added.
"We will be engaging Microsoft and other companies as well as consulting our counterparts to learn as much as we can from the incident and its aftermath."
Hong Kong International Airport has also resumed normal operations, Chinese state media said on Saturday.
Airlines' passenger check-in systems, which had been affected by the global outage, have returned to normal, CCTV said in a Weibo post, citing the city's airport authority.
Globally, services from airlines to healthcare, shipping and finance were coming back online after the mistake in CrowdStrike's security software update sparked hours-long global computer systems outages - another incident highlighting the vulnerability of the world's interconnected technologies.
After the outage was resolved, companies were dealing with backlogs of delayed and cancelled flights and medical appointments, missed orders and other issues that could take days to resolve.
Businesses also face questions about how to avoid future blackouts triggered by technology meant to safeguard their systems.
CrowdStrike is not a household name but it is a US$83 billion company with more than 20,000 subscribers around the world including Amazon.com and Microsoft.
CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said on social media platform X that a defect was found "in a single content update for Windows hosts" that affected Microsoft customers.
CrowdStrike has one of the largest shares of the highly competitive cybersecurity market, leading some industry analysts to question whether control over such operationally critical software should remain with just a handful of companies.
The outage also raised concerns that many organisations are not well prepared to implement contingency plans when a single point of failure, such as an IT system or a piece of software within it, goes down.
But these outages will happen again, experts say, until more contingencies are built into networks and organisations introduce better back-ups.
The scale of the outage was massive, but not yet quantifiable because it involved only systems that were running CrowdStrike software, said Ann Johnson, who heads Microsoft's security and compliance business.
"We have hundreds of engineers right now working directly with CrowdStrike to get customers back online," she said.
Air travel was immediately hit, because carriers depend on smooth scheduling that, when interrupted, can ripple into lengthy delays. Out of more than 110,000 scheduled commercial flights on Friday, 5,000 were canceled globally with more expected, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.
Delta Air Lines was one of the hardest hit, with 20 per cent of its flights canceled, according to flight tracking service FlightAware. The US carrier said it expected additional delays and cancelations potentially through the weekend.
Airports from Los Angeles to Singapore, Amsterdam and Berlin said airlines were checking in passengers with handwritten boarding passes, causing delays.
Banks and financial services companies warned customers of disruptions and traders across markets spoke of problems executing transactions. Insurers could face a raft of business interruption claims.
US healthcare providers reported that outages were affecting call centres, patient portals and other operations. Mass General Brigham in Boston said it was treating only urgent cases while Tufts Medical Center warned that patients might experience delays or need to be rescheduled.
In Britain, booking systems used by doctors were offline, posts on X by medical officials said, while Sky News, one of the country's major broadcasters, was taken off the air.
As the day progressed, more companies reported a return to normal service, including Spanish airport operator Aena , US carriers United Airlines and American Airlines, and Australia's Commonwealth Bank.
Continue reading...
Airlines were forced to implement manual check-ins at Changi and airports around the world after a software update by cybersecurity company CrowdStrike brought down computer systems running on the Microsoft Windows operating system.
In a Facebook post on Saturday morning, Changi Airport said a small number of airlines still required manual check-ins.
"SERIOUS AND CONCERNING"
Mrs Josephine Teo, Singapore's Minister for Digital Development and Information, called the outage "serious and concerning".
"My team has been working through the night to support companies in Singapore whose services to the public were affected by the outages," said Mrs Teo in a Facebook post on Saturday afternoon. "Our immediate priority was to help them recover, and I am glad that most of these services are back to normal."
Her comments follow a statement by her ministry stating most companies affected by the outage had restored their services to the public as of 6am on Saturday.
"These include airline check-in services, newspapers, radio and postal services," said the Ministry for Digital Development and Information, adding that it was closely monitoring the situation and would provide assistance to the companies if needed.
Mrs Teo also said that as the situation unfolded worldwide, it was "clear the impact on Singapore, while concerning, was not the worst that could have been".
She noted that essential and government services were mostly unaffected and some of the services that were disrupted, such as postal services, recovered relatively quickly as business continuity plans were activated.
"While we were less impacted, it will be unwise to think that we are more resilient than others," she said.
"Although experts have so far ruled out the likelihood that cyber attacks caused these outages, the point remains valid - we must always plan for recovery and be able to implement those plans swiftly when needed," she added.
"We will be engaging Microsoft and other companies as well as consulting our counterparts to learn as much as we can from the incident and its aftermath."
Hong Kong International Airport has also resumed normal operations, Chinese state media said on Saturday.
Airlines' passenger check-in systems, which had been affected by the global outage, have returned to normal, CCTV said in a Weibo post, citing the city's airport authority.
Related:
Globally, services from airlines to healthcare, shipping and finance were coming back online after the mistake in CrowdStrike's security software update sparked hours-long global computer systems outages - another incident highlighting the vulnerability of the world's interconnected technologies.
After the outage was resolved, companies were dealing with backlogs of delayed and cancelled flights and medical appointments, missed orders and other issues that could take days to resolve.
Businesses also face questions about how to avoid future blackouts triggered by technology meant to safeguard their systems.
CrowdStrike is not a household name but it is a US$83 billion company with more than 20,000 subscribers around the world including Amazon.com and Microsoft.
CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said on social media platform X that a defect was found "in a single content update for Windows hosts" that affected Microsoft customers.
CrowdStrike has one of the largest shares of the highly competitive cybersecurity market, leading some industry analysts to question whether control over such operationally critical software should remain with just a handful of companies.
The outage also raised concerns that many organisations are not well prepared to implement contingency plans when a single point of failure, such as an IT system or a piece of software within it, goes down.
But these outages will happen again, experts say, until more contingencies are built into networks and organisations introduce better back-ups.
The scale of the outage was massive, but not yet quantifiable because it involved only systems that were running CrowdStrike software, said Ann Johnson, who heads Microsoft's security and compliance business.
"We have hundreds of engineers right now working directly with CrowdStrike to get customers back online," she said.
Related:
THOUSANDS OF FLIGHTS CANCELLED
Air travel was immediately hit, because carriers depend on smooth scheduling that, when interrupted, can ripple into lengthy delays. Out of more than 110,000 scheduled commercial flights on Friday, 5,000 were canceled globally with more expected, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.
Delta Air Lines was one of the hardest hit, with 20 per cent of its flights canceled, according to flight tracking service FlightAware. The US carrier said it expected additional delays and cancelations potentially through the weekend.
Airports from Los Angeles to Singapore, Amsterdam and Berlin said airlines were checking in passengers with handwritten boarding passes, causing delays.
Banks and financial services companies warned customers of disruptions and traders across markets spoke of problems executing transactions. Insurers could face a raft of business interruption claims.
US healthcare providers reported that outages were affecting call centres, patient portals and other operations. Mass General Brigham in Boston said it was treating only urgent cases while Tufts Medical Center warned that patients might experience delays or need to be rescheduled.
In Britain, booking systems used by doctors were offline, posts on X by medical officials said, while Sky News, one of the country's major broadcasters, was taken off the air.
As the day progressed, more companies reported a return to normal service, including Spanish airport operator Aena , US carriers United Airlines and American Airlines, and Australia's Commonwealth Bank.
Continue reading...