What to know as Microsoft clients hit by massive global outages

Banks, airlines, television networks and health systems around the world that rely on Microsoft 365 apps reported widespread outages Friday. Thousands of flights and train services were cancelled globally, including more than 1,000 in the U.S., and there were disruptions to many other public and retail services.

Here's what we know about the outages:

What caused the global Microsoft outages?

The issue was caused by a technical problem that global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said it had identified in its software and was working to resolve. CrowdStrike provides antivirus software to Microsoft for its Windows devices.

"The underlying cause has been fixed, however, residual impact is continuing to affect some Microsoft 365 apps and services. We're conducting additional mitigations to provide relief," Microsoft said in a statement posted on social media.

When CBS News called CrowdStrike's technical support line Friday, a pre-recorded message said the company was aware of reports of crashes on Microsoft systems related to its Falcon Sensor software.

In a statement shared Friday with CBS News and on social media , CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said the issue had been identified and a solution was being implemented.

"CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted," Kurtz said. "This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed."

Speaking later Friday to CNBC, Kurtz apologized to all those affected by the issue and stressed that it was not caused by a cyberattack.

"There's a single file that drives some additional logic on how we look for bad actors," Kurt said. "This logic was pushed out and caused an issue only in the Microsoft environment, specific to this bug that we had."

What has been affected by the Microsoft outages?

Over 1,000 flights had been cancelled within, into or out of the U.S. as of Friday morning, and more than 3,000 others were delayed, according to the the flight tracking service, FlightAware . Globally, more than 25,000 flights were delayed early Friday.

American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines resumed at least some flight departures later Friday morning after pausing operations earlier in the day due to the outages.

"We are resuming some flights but expect schedule disruptions to continue throughout Friday," United Airlines said in a statement.

In Europe, Lufthansa, KLM and SAS Airlines reported disruptions. Switzerland's largest airport, in Zurich, reported planes had not been allowed to land, according to CBS News partner network BBC News.

In India, at the country's primary airport in Delhi, everything was being done manually. No electric check-in terminals were functioning and gate information was being updated by hand on a white board, the BBC reported.

Hospitals in Germany said they were cancelling elective surgeries Friday and doctors in the U.K. said they were having issues accessing their online booking system. Pharmacists in the U.K. said there were disruptions with medicine deliveries and accessing prescriptions.

The London Stock Exchange said it had experienced disruptions to its regulatory news service, but that trading had not been impacted. A spokesperson for the New York Stock Exchange said markets were fully operational and a normal opening was expected.

Delivery companies like FedEx also reported that some packages could be delayed due to the outages.

"FedEx has activated contingency plans to mitigate impacts from a global IT outage experienced by a third party software vendor. However, potential delays are possible for package deliveries with a commitment of July 19, 2024," the company said in a statement.

When will the Microsoft outages be fixed?

A Department of Homeland Security memo to staff obtained by CBS News said that "DHS systems are currently impacted by a global outage of the cybersecurity software CrowdStrike. This is impacting many businesses globally, as you may be seeing in the news. This was not a cyberattack."

New Zealand's acting prime minister David Seymour said on social media that officials were working hard to understand the impacts of the wide-ranging outages, but that he also didn't see any indication that the outages had been caused by a malicious actor.

"I have not currently received any reporting to indicate these issues are related to malicious cyber security activity," Seymour said.

A spokesman for Germany's interior ministry also said there was no indication that the outages were due to a cyberattack, Reuters reported.

But even with the fix being implemented by CrowdStrike, some of the problems caused will likely take time to solve, Chief Information Officer at identity security firm CyberArk, Omer Grossman, told Reuters. He said the reason for this is that the problem has to do with Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) products that run on individual client computers.

"It turns out that because the endpoints have crashed — the Blue Screen of Death — they cannot be updated remotely and the problem must be solved manually, endpoint by endpoint. This is expected to be a process that will take days," Grossman said.

In his interview with CNBC, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said many of the affected systems were already beginning to recover, and a fix could be as straight forward for some clients as rebooting their computers or servers.

He acknowledged, however, that "some systems may not fully recover, and we're working individually with each and every customer to make sure we can get them up and running and operational."