How one of the biggest ever IT outages hit businesses globally

The global issue affecting the Windows operating system has been linked to the cybersecurity firm, Crowdstrike. In a statement on its website, the company confirmed that it was aware of reports of crashes on Microsoft Windows and admitted on Friday that a defective software update had caused the chaos.

It resulted in thousands of workers being unable to log on to their computers, whilst businesses from finance to healthcare were also affected.

On X, Microsoft 365 acknowledged the issue that was affecting users and said on Friday morning: "We're investigating an issue impacting users ability to access various Microsoft 365 apps and services."

Following this, early Friday afternoon, Microsoft confirmed that Crowdstrike was communicating with its clients directly through their support portal, with the latter saying in a blog post, "The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed. We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our wesbite."

Airlines were among the businesses that took to social media to update passengers on flight disruptions after reports started to emerge about the IT outage.

For flights still going ahead, a number of companies were issuing handwritten tickets due to printing issues.

Berlin Brandenburg Airport said: "Due to a technical fault, there will be delays in check-in."

Spain's Vueling Airlines also updated its passengers with a post on social media platform X and said: "We inform you that due to a global computer systems outage, our flight operations could be altered.

"We are working to minimise the impact on our clients. If your flight is affected we will inform you via email."

Amsterdam Airport Schiphol