A global tech outage crippled many industries from airports to finance and hospitals for hours on Friday before services started coming back online.
The outage highlighted the risks of a worldwide move towards interconnected digital technologies.
A software update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike appeared to have triggered systems problems that affected Microsoft customers around the world.
The outage grounded flights, forced some broadcasters off the air and left customers without access to services including healthcare or banking.
“This is a very, very uncomfortable illustration of the fragility of the world’s core Internet infrastructure,” said Ciaran Martin, professor at Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government and former head of the UK National Cyber Security Centre.
Edinburgh Airport said passengers should not travel to the airport without first checking the status of their flight with their airline, but Glasgow and Aberdeen airports said they were largely unaffected by the current global IT issues.
CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said on X that a defect was found “in a single content update for Windows hosts” that affected Microsoft customers and that a fix was being deployed.
Microsoft said later on Friday that the issue had been fixed.
“We’re deeply sorry for the impact that we’ve caused to customers, to travellers, to anyone affected by this, including our company,” Kurtz told NBC News’ “Today” programme.
“Many of the customers are rebooting the system and it’s coming up and it’ll be operational,” Kurtz said. “It could be some time for some systems that won’t automatically recover.”
Crowdstrike ran a recorded phone message saying it was aware of reports of crashes on Microsoft’s Windows operating system relating to its Falcon sensor.
There is no information to suggest the outage was a cyber security incident, the office of Australia’s National Cyber Security Coordinator Michelle McGuinness said in a post on X.
Spain reported a “computer incident” at all its airports while Ryanair, Europe’s largest airline by passenger numbers, warned passengers of potential disruptions which it said would affect “all airlines operating across the Network.”
AWS cloud service provider said in a statement that it was “investigating reports of connectivity issues to Windows EC2 instances and Workspaces within AWS.”
Edinburgh Airport said on X: “An IT system outage means wait times are longer than usual at the airport.
“This outage is affecting many other businesses, including airports.
“Work is ongoing to resolve this and our teams are on hand to assist where we can. Passengers are thanked for their patience.”
Edinburgh Airport added: “Update – IT system outage. Passengers should not travel to the airport without first checking the status of their flight with their airline.
“The wait at security is currently around one hour due to the outage and our teams are managing this as best they can.”
Glasgow Airport and Aberdeen Airport, both owned by AGS Airports, issued that same statement on X: “We are largely unaffected by the current global IT issues. At present a small number of airlines have moved to manual check-in and some retailers are only accepting cash payments.”