MICROSOFT, the world’s largest information technology business, experienced a global IT outage on Friday afternoon, causing global mayhem in several regions of the world including the Philippines.
Banks, supermarkets, and other big organizations around the world have reported computer faults that are interrupting their services, with several airlines warning of delays and other airports halting aircraft.
Photo Courtesy: @troyhunt | X
Based on reports, Windows users were seeing blue screen errors on their screens, with the laptop/PC becoming stuck in a restart loop, which impacted multiple organizations throughout the world.
Hours after the interruption, Metrobank and RCBC swiftly informed the public that the affected services were now available.
According to Microsoft, they were able to finish their mitigation steps. “After an extended period of monitoring, we’ve determined that the issue is mitigated, and all previously impacted Microsoft 365 apps and services have recovered.”
Here in the country, officials from the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Authority, said that as of 8 in the evening, airline operations were back online.
Assistance was also provided to the affected passengers.
What happened with the Philippine banks?
From a local perspective, the Philippines was also affected by the outage. It apparently affected banks, asideairports. Metrobank and RCBC promptly issued a warning on the problem.
“With the ongoing global outage related to Microsoft-based systems, customers may experience a slow down or temporary unavailability of some bank products and services through our online channels,” said Metrobank on a Facebook post.
Metrobank informed their customers that they could access their funds using ATMs or deposit them through Cash Acceptance Machines.
Clients were advised to use the bank’s ATMs and deposit monies at Cash Accept Machines. Their branch personnel are more than willing to help consumers.
“We are closely monitoring the situation and will immediately resume the affected services once the issue has been resolved. Thank you for your understanding,” added Metrobank.
Screenshot from: RCBC | Facebook
Meanwhile, RCBC also released an advisory, “RCBC is currently experiencing technical difficulties affecting RCBC Pulz, RCBC Online Banking and Diskartech resulting in a slowdown in some of your online banking transactions.”
RCBC also warned that as a result of the outage, the majority of their services were unavailable. These include RCBC Pulz, Online Banking, and Diskartech.
“You may continue to do your banking transactions at any RCBC Branch or RCBC ATMs nationwide. Thank you for your understanding,” said RCBC.
Despite being resolved, the disruption was undeniably severe. Imagine, the main reason for this disruption was simply an upgrade to their CrowdStrike Falcon Sensor software.
How much may the world be affected if additional significant bugs in their software appear. This must be addressed, as it has been a global issue for Windows users.
