A global IT outage is causing widespread disruption at airports, hospitals, retail outlets and more.
According to an article published by the Telegraph, Frontier Airlines grounded flights for over two hours and other reports from the BBC suggest GP surgeries in the UK are only seeing “acutely ill” patients.
Government facilities and services are also said to have been hit with the outage, with a spokesperson for New Zealand’s parliament claiming that it is facing computer network issues.
Across the rest of the world, many broadcasters, telecommunications providers, transport hubs and banks have been affected, including Sky News.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Thameslink – the UK railway service – wrote: ‘We are currently experiencing widespread IT issues across our entire network.
‘Our IT teams are actively investigating to determine the root cause of the problem.
‘We are unable to access driver diagrams at certain locations, leading to potential short-notice cancellations, particularly on the Thameslink and Great Northern networks.’
Ryanair also commented: ‘We’re currently experiencing disruption across the network due to a Global 3rd party IT outage which is out of our control.
‘We advise all passengers to arrive at the airport at least 3 hours before their scheduled departure time.’
“A timely reminder”
Alan Stephenson-Brown, CEO, Evolve commented: “News of a global IT outage that has caused problems at airlines, media and banks is a timely reminder that operational resilience should be at the forefront of the business agenda.
“Demonstrating that even large corporations aren’t immune to IT troubles, this outage highlights the importance of having distributed data centres and rerouting connectivity that ensures business can continue functioning when cloud infrastructure is disrupted.
“By prioritising both contingency planning and preventative measures, IT systems can be protected.
“I urge business leaders to seriously appraise the systems they have in place to identify potential vulnerabilities before they find themselves the subject of the next IT outages headline.”
This is an ongoing story – the root cause of the issue is currently being explored.
