CrowdStrike failure: How widespread global IT outage could cost billions

A global IT outage across Microsoft systems brought operating systems across the world to a stop, downing banking services, preventing supermarket purchases and causing havoc for public transport commuters.

A New Zealand tech expert says billions of dollars and hours of productivity could be lost after a global IT outage downed banking services, disrupted flights and prevented supermarket purchases.

Gorilla Technology Chief Executive Paul Spain said the serious outage would impact countless services.

“The challenging thing will be how quick and easy for technology experts to get in there and fix up the issue,” he said.

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Operating systems across New Zealand, Australia and around the world were brought to a halt this afternoon.

Outages included nationwide bank payment systems in addition to global network problems with television and Microsoft services.

Spain said because banks and all manner of organisations rely on Windows, that has caused the whole world to come to a halt.

Herald readers have spoken of queues at supermarkets due to checkouts going down and commuters being unable to tag on or tag off with Auckland Transport HOP cards.

Spain said CrowdStrike, the platform linked to the outage, was a cyber security service that was a broader version of an anti-virus software.

“On the system, it’s looking for any security issue and tries to stop it. It looks like in this case, maybe they have released a faulty update,” he said.

“When you have a key bit of software in your system that fails that is so deeply tied into your operating system, that particular piece failing can stop your entire computer from operating.”

“There is a fix but it requires a technician to visit each failed computer in most cases rather than being an automated fix. A lot of work for IT staff globally.”

Customers queue at Woolworths Hobsonsville in Auckland amid a mass IT outage.

Spain said billions of dollars of productivity and commerce would have been lost across the world due to this outage.

“People won’t necessarily be able to catch their Ubers, and then there is a flow on. What happens when you can’t pay for something you’re used to paying for because of technology.”

The Chief Information Officer of information security company CyberArk warned the outage will cause “dramatic” damage to business processes at the global level.

“The current event appears – even in July – that it will be one of the most significant of cyber issues of 2024,” Omer Grossman said in a statement.

“Because the endpoints have crashed - the Blue Screen of Death - they cannot be updated remotely and this the problem must be solved manually, endpoint by endpoint. This is expected to be a process that will take days.”

David Williams is an Auckland-based Multimedia Journalist who joined the Herald in 2023. He covers breaking news and general topics.