Computer users in Houston and around the world report widespread outages affecting banks, airlines, hospitals and police

WELLINGTON – Residents in the Houston area are becoming aware of a major IT issue that is affecting Microsoft users around the world. This includes banks and airlines, hospitals, law enforcement, and many operations and businesses that use Microsoft 365 apps and services.

When you try to log into your computer, you may get a BSOD, the Blue Screen of Death.

The problem stems from a cybersecurity company, Crowstrike, which is used by many businesses and operations. It encountered a problem with an update that caused systems to go down around the world starting Thursday night.

We have a ground stoppage at both Houston airports. American Airlines, Delta and United Airlines systems are also down.

Microsoft said in its X posts that the situation was improving, but increasing outages were still being reported worldwide Friday morning.

The website DownDectector, which tracks user-reported internet outages, has recorded increasing outages at services from Visa, ADT Security and Amazon, as well as airlines including American Airlines, United and Delta.

Microsoft 365 reported on X that the company was “working to redirect impacted traffic to alternative systems to mitigate the impact more quickly” and that it was “observing a positive trend in service availability.”

The company did not respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press.

Australian media outlets including ABC and Sky News were unable to broadcast their news on their television and radio stations and reported sudden shutdowns of Windows-based computers.

An X user posted a screenshot of an alert from Crowdstrike saying the company was aware of “reports of crashes on Windows hosts” related to its Falcon Sensor platform. The alert was posted on a password-protected Crowdstrike site and could not be verified. Crowdstrike did not respond to a request for comment.