A major tech outage impacted a variety of industries and services around the globe on Friday, causing problems for airports, hospitals, and some banks and financial institutions.
The outage stemmed from "a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts," said CrowdStrike (CRWD) CEO George Kurtz, and was "not a security incident or cyberattack." The update defect meant problems for companies that use Microsoft, and impacts started as early as about midnight Eastern Time on Thursday, according to Microsoft. By early morning Friday, Microsoft had "reports of successful recovery."
Flights were disrupted and some European and Australian television broadcasters had issues going on air, the New York Times reported. 911 systems in a few states went down due to the issue. By late Friday morning, Eastern Time, repairs had begun and the disruptions were being repaired. For those impacted by delayed or canceled flights, there are ways to get refunded.
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There have been concerns about the outage impacting banks and financial service. By and large, though, major financial service in the U.S. have reported they are running operationally, despite concerns for some of the best online brokers and trading platforms.
How banks and finances were impacted by the tech outage
Most major American banking systems and stock trading was largely unaffected by the glitch, but there were some impacts reported.
Charles Schwab posted on its website: "Due to a third-party, global, industry-wide issue, certain online functionality may be intermittently slow or unavailable. We’re actively monitoring the issue. Phone services may be disrupted and hold times may be longer than usual." A Kiplinger employee noted his Schwab account didn't seem to show price changes registering on stocks as of early Friday morning.
"TD was impacted by today's global technology disruption but we can confirm that the majority of our impacted systems, including online banking, have been restored," TD Bank told Kiplinger in a Friday afternoon statement, adding that teams are continuing to monitor the situation. In an earlier statement, the bank recommended customers visit a local TD bank or ATM for immediate banking needs.
Visa has not seen disruptions to its ability to process payments, and systems are operating normally, but it is "aware of reports of people being unable to make payments" and is investing the situation, a spokesperson told Kiplinger. Citizens Bank said in a statement it is "currently experiencing very limited impacts" and that tech teams are "fully engaged" to monitor the system and resolve any issues that come up.
KeyBank told Kiplinger it does not use CrowdStrike internally but is monitoring for impacts on third-party service providers. Raymond James, a Readers' Choice Awards full-service broker favorite, reported to Kiplinger that systems are operating normally. Interactive Brokers told Kiplinger all its systems "are currently 100% functional and operating normally."
Ally Financial confirmed to Kiplinger Friday afternoon that all systems are fully operational. Edward Jones told Kiplinger impacts "have been minimal."
Fidelity said it has not been impacted, and Vanguard told Kiplinger in a statement "there is no current impact to our products or pricing." Citi and Robinhood appeared to be operating normally. Zelle told Kiplinger it is "operating as normal."
A New York Stock Exchange spokesperson told Kiplinger "markets are fully operational."
The London Stock Exchange was running operationally with the exception of its news service, which was not able to publish news, Barrons reported. The service was in the process of repairs as of Friday morning, per Reuters.
Banks in South Africa had disruptions causing people to say they were unable to make payments with bank cards, and Bradesco, a Brazilian bank said digital services were unstable but ATMs were working normally, according to the Associated Press.
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