Microsoft IT outage live: 8.5m devices affected as CrowdStrike gives update on ‘fix’

NHS England has warned of “continued disruption” to GP services into next week from the global IT outage.

Across England, GP surgeries reported being unable to book appointments or access patient records on Friday as their EMIS appointment and patient record system went down.

NHS England said on Saturday afternoon that its systems were “coming back online in most areas” but “still running slightly slower than usual”.

An NHS spokesperson said: “As practices recover from the loss of IT systems on Friday, there may be some continued disruption, particularly to GP services, in some areas into next week as practices work to rebook appointments.

“The advice for Monday remains that patients should attend appointments as normal unless told otherwise.”

Dr Fari Ahmad said the IT outage meant “everything went down” in her surgery and the disruption would cause “a lot more issues later on in the week”.

The GP told BBC Breakfast: “We had people who were supposed to come in for results, and we couldn’t see them. We said ‘Sorry, we can’t help you’. We were just trying to deal with the emergencies on the day that really couldn’t wait. We couldn’t do our routine stuff, so the implications for us is a lot of that’s been bumped up.”

Australia’s cyber intelligence agency has warned “malicious websites and unofficial code” are being released online claiming to aid recovery from Friday’s global digital outage.

Australia was one of many countries affected by the outage, which hit media, retailers, banks and airlines, causing havoc worldwide after a botched software update from CrowdStrike.

On Saturday, the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) – the country’s cyber intelligence agency – said “a number of malicious websites and unofficial code are being released claiming to help entities recover from the widespread outages caused by the CrowdStrike technical incident”.

On its website, the agency said its cyber security centre “strongly encourages all consumers to source their technical information and updates from official CrowdStrike sources only”.

Cyber Security Minister Clare O’Neil said on social media platform X on Saturday that Australians should “be on the lookout for possible scams and phishing attempts”.

Friday’s outage hit Commonwealth Bank of Australia, the country’s largest bank, which said some customers were unable to make PayID payments, an issue later resolved. National airline Qantas and Sydney airport said planes were delayed but still flying.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said late on Friday that there had been no impact to critical infrastructure, government services or emergency phone systems.

The Australian home affairs minister has revealed Crowdstrike is “now close to rolling out an automatic fix to the issue with their update”.

Clare O’Neil said the company at the centre of the world’s biggest-ever IT outage has told the federal government that it is not far off the fix that would enable systems to return online.

Writing on the social media platform X on Sunday, she said: “CrowdStrike informed the meeting this morning that they are now close to rolling out an automatic fix to the issue with their update, as is Microsoft. This should increase the speed at which systems across the economy are back online.”

A global IT outage hit one-third of drug deliveries to pharmacies in England as chaos impacted thousands of GP practices and hospitals across the country declared critical incidents.

GPs, pharmacies and NHS 111 services across the country suffered major disruption on Friday after an update from CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity company crashed Microsoft Windows systems.

The IT bug hit EMIS which is used by around 60 per cent of GP practices – 3,700- to access patient records, book appointments and issue prescriptions.

A widespread IT outage affecting sectors from the NHS to transport and banking to media has been described as an unprecedented sign of how exposed services are with a potential overreliance on certain operating systems.

The major disruption could prompt a rethink on whether the most resilient operating systems are being used and whether it is “lazy” to stick with what we know, according to cybersecurity expert Dr Harjinder Lallie.

The associate professor at the University of Warwick described the situation as an IT “catastrophe”.

Workers globally may not be paid on time due to a major IT outage causing chaos around the world, payroll businesses have warned.

The IT outage has resulted in queues and delays at airports, disruption to GP services and payment failures in some shops.

Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike is “actively working” to fix a “defect” in an update for Microsoft Windows users which sparked the outage.