Mayor Adams, state officials address global Microsoft outages

The issue is currently being blamed on a software update coming from cybersecurity company CrowdStrike.

Elly Morillo, Heather Fordham, Daniella Rodriguez and News 12 Staff

Jul 19, 2024, 4:10 PM

Updated 47 days ago

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People from across the globe, including in New York City, were impacted by widespread Microsoft outages.
The issue is currently being blamed on a software update coming from cybersecurity company CrowdStrike.
Millions of New Yorkers ran into problems regarding their bank accounts, flight plans and work schedules due to the outage.
Microsoft 365 says that it has mitigated the issue that was impacting Microsoft 365 apps and services, stating that after 12:30 on Friday service should be recovered.
The outage was first reported overnight, and Mayor Eric Adams and his team jumped to action on Friday morning to ensure emergency services were up and running.
"Early this morning, they sent out a software update that inadvertly took systems offline, they sent out a software update that inadvertly took systems offline, this was not a cyber attack, that was hit or cyber hit on city infrastructure," said Mayor Adams.
Flight across the city were grounded, with a slew of cancellations coming in from major airlines, like Delta, United, American Airlines and Spirit. Those airlines say that cancellations and delays are still an issue and that all flyers should check in with their respective airlines.
The MTA says that the impacts from the outage were limited for their service beyond disruptions of the countdown clocks for the arrival of subways at stations across the five boroughs.
CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz released a statement saying:

Today was not a security or cyber incident. Our customers remain fully protected. We understand the gravity of the situation and are deeply sorry for the inconvenience and disruption. We are working with all impacted customers to ensure that systems are back up and they can deliver the services their customers are counting on. As noted earlier, the issue has been identified and a fix has been deployed. There was an issue with a Falcon content update for Windows Hosts. For the latest information that we will continuously update, please refer to the CrowdStrike website, my posts on LinkedIn, and my posts on X. I will continue to provide updates to our community and the industry as they become available.