Industry News
A global IT outage has disrupted major services worldwide, including airlines, banks, media, and government sectors. The outage, which has been linked back to CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity company based in the United States, has affected services in various countries, including Australia. The cybersecurity firm admitted on Friday, July 19, that a defective software update had caused the IT outage. The Austin, Texas-based company’s shares were down nearly 15% in premarket trading on NASDAQ early Friday.
It is considered to be the largest IT outage the world has ever seen and has affected airports, supermarkets, banks, hospitals, media outlets, and other businesses. In the USA, the Federal Airline Authority (FAA) stated, that national airlines, such as United Airlines, American Airlines, and Delta had all been grounded. The IT outage has also had effects on industries one might not expect, such as ski resorts in the southern hemisphere.
We have received reports from Perisher Ski Resort in Australia, where automated ticketing services for lift passes were not functioning due to the outage. “I just went to get my ski pass for tomorrow and the terminals [at Bullocks Flat] won’t give them out,” said Joshua Payne in an online Facebook forum. However, Perisher assured us that the resort’s IT team was on top of issues and things were under control. The ticket windows appear to be operating normally and the glitch at the automated ticket terminals was soon resolved.
Austrian company Skidata GmbH, the world’s market leader in access management with over 10,000 installations in over 100 countries, has not been affected by the global IT outage and lift gates operated normally. We will advise readers of any updates with regards to ski-related issues from the software glitch.
