In short:
Australian government agencies, retailers, banks and airlines called an emergency meeting in response to this afternoon’s unprecedented global technical outage.
The outage was caused by an update from cybersecurity company CrowdStrike.
Flights have been grounded, payment systems interrupted and media networks left unable to operate as normal as a result of the computer shutdown.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says there’s “no impact to critical infrastructure, government services or triple-0 services”, after a snap crisis meeting was held in response to Friday’s unprecedented global technical outage.
Australian government agencies, retailers, banks and airlines called an emergency meeting in response to Friday’s unprecedented global technical outage.
Flights were grounded, payment systems interrupted and media networks left unable to operate as normal as a result of the computer shutdown.
Major supermarkets, telecommunications providers, transport operators and energy and water representatives were invited to the meeting.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese released a statement on Friday evening on the unfolding events.
“I understand Australians are concerned about the outage that is unfolding globally and affecting a wide range of services,” he said.
“There is no impact to critical infrastructure, government services or triple-0 services at this stage.”
Mr Albanese said the National Coordination Mechanism had been activated.
“My government is working closely with the National Cyber Security Coordinator,” his statement said.
Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil said CrowdStrike attended the meeting and “we can confirm there is no evidence that this is a cybersecurity incident”.
“This is a technical issue, caused by a CrowdStrike update to its customers.”
Ms O’Neil said the issue had now been fixed.
“They have issued a fix for this, allowing affected companies and organisations to reboot their systems without the problem,” she said.
Hamish Hansford, the deputy secretary from the Home Affairs Cyber and Infrastructure Security Centre, also released a message on social media about the emergency meeting.
“CrowdStrike are working on the fix, they’ve provided technical support to their customers,” he said.
“Over the next hours and days we hope that this incident will self-resolve as technical responses kick in.”
“There is no reason to panic, CrowdStrike are on it, it is not a cybersecurity incident and we’re working as fast as we can to resolve the incident.”
“The company has informed us that most issues should be resolved through the fix they have provided, but given the size and nature of this incident, it may take some time to resolve.
“Governments are closely engaged at all levels, focused on bringing together the affected parties and ensuring government entities institute the fix as quickly as possible.”
The National Emergency Mechanism group is being co-chaired by the National Emergency Management Agency.
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