Airlines, businesses, media outlets hit by global IT disruption

Flights, banks, media outlets and companies across the world were disrupted by a major internet outage affecting Microsoft on Friday morning.

The chief executive of CrowdStrike the cybersecurity company at the heart of the outage said it was gradually fixing the issue adding there was a defect in a “single content update for Windows hosts.”

Problems continued hours after this statement.

In South Africa, at least two major banks temporarily experienced service disruptions as customers complained they couldn’t make payments using their bank cards or use ATMs.

Southern African airline Airlink also reported that its IT network and telephone lines were down.

Queues have formed at many airports as the global internet outage hit check-in procedures for flights — although in some locations systems were now back online.

Retail outlets, railway companies and hospitals in several parts of the world were also affected.