A faulty update from cybersecurity provider CrowdStrike is knocking affected PCs and servers offline, forcing them into a recovery boot loop so machines can’t start properly. CrowdStrike is widely used by many businesses worldwide to manage the security of Windows PCs and servers.

Australian banks, airlines, and TV broadcasters first raised the alarm as thousands of machines started to go offline. The issues spread fast as businesses based in Europe started their work day.

UK broadcaster Sky News could not broadcast its morning news bulletins for hours this morning and showed a message apologizing for “the interruption to this broadcast.” Ryanair, one of the biggest airlines in Europe, also says it’s experiencing a “third-party” IT issue, impacting flight departures.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) says it’s assisting airlines like Delta, United, and American Airlines due to communications issues. “The FAA is closely monitoring a technical issue impacting IT systems at US airlines,” says FAA spokesperson Jeannie Shiffer in a statement to The Verge. “Several airlines have requested FAA assistance with ground stops for their fleets until the issue is resolved.”

Berlin airport also warns of travel delays due to “technical issues.” The issues have also impacted many 911 emergency call centers in Alaska. One airline in India has even turned to handwritten boarding passes due to the outages.

“CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts,” says CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz in a post on X. “Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack.”

CrowdStrike says the issue has been identified, and a fix has been deployed, but fixing these machines won’t be simple for IT admins. The root cause appears to be an update to the kernel-level driver that CrowdStrike uses to secure Windows machines.

While CrowdStrike identified the issue and reverted the faulty update after “widespread reports of BSODs on Windows hosts,” it doesn’t appear to help machines that have already been impacted.

In a Reddit thread, hundreds of IT admins are reporting widespread issues. The workaround involves booting affected Windows machines into safe mode, navigating to the CrowdStrike directory, and deleting a system file. That will be troublesome on some cloud-based servers or even for Windows laptops deployed and used remotely.

“Our entire company is offline,” says one Reddit poster, while another says 70 percent of their laptops are down and stuck in a boot loop. “Happy Friday,” says one Reddit poster. It looks like IT admins worldwide will have a long day.

In what appears to be a separate outage, Microsoft is also recovering from several issues with its Microsoft 365 apps and services. The root cause of those issues was “a configuration change in a portion of our Azure backend workloads.”

The largest bank in Switzerland manages around $2.4 trillion in wealth for clients globally, and has been operating 25 traditional datacenters. This move to the Microsoft cloud is a bid to reduce costs while at the same time complying with strict Swiss privacy laws.

Switzerland being the world’s largest center for offshore wealth, and all.

To that end, the organization has opted to store data at the purpose-built facilities that Microsoft constructed near Zurich and Geneva.

The shift will happen next year, according to people who asked not to be identified as the matter is still private. Still, this would be a big win for Microsoft over rivals Google and Amazon, after the Seattle based firm gambled on building Azure facilities in the country.

But while Microsoft and UBS representatives declined to comment on the size of the deal, the chief information officer at the bank did acknowledge that things are moving in this direction:

“We’ve started to accelerate our journey into the public cloud space. UBS expects significant cost benefits from this strategy, while not compromising on security.”

The exact locations of the installations are kept secret for security reasons.

But this is actually what spurred Microsoft to build facilities in the country to meet demand from local banks, insurers and pharmaceutical companies.

Union Bank of Switzerland plans to increasingly outsource to technology companies, and scale back on the number of its own datacenters over the next four years. It is currently deciding which applications will be shifted to Microsoft, while ensuring no client data is moved.

Love all the secrecy!

Basically, an automatic teller machine that uses artificial intelligence and cloud computing services.

This is a proof of concept that has been designed in collaboration with the National Australian Bank, and makes use of Azure Cognitive Services that removes the need for physical cards or devices to access cash from ATMS.

Instead, customers that are opted into the service are able to withdraw cash using facial recognition and a PIN.

Steve Worrall of Microsoft talked about how cloud computing and AI present the opportunity for a new generation of financial services to be developed and deployed at scale:

“We believe AI will profoundly impact financial services and the sorts of solutions that banks will be able to deliver in the future. For a consumer-facing application such as the AI-powered ATM we’ve developed with NAB, this sort of continuous AI innovation is important.”

NAB believes that this ATM is a look into what the future might hold for the way customers access banking products and services. Cloud technology, they say, is the driver of these world leading features and capabilities.

For this reason, the bank is focused on its digital transformation and how to transition to the cloud. It is trying to identify patterns and then deploy a set of automated landscapes for its developers.

The bank plans on using the customer relationship management solution to engage with customers, empower employees, optimize operations and transform products and services. The decision was made in response to an increasing demand from millennial consumers for personalized service.

Noor shaped its IT strategy to implement an enterprise wide CRM system, one with the potential to transform customer engagement.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM was chosen for its ability to deliver 360-degree views of customers through its Common Data Model, including prospects across corporate, retail, wealth and investments.

Sayed Hashish, Regional General Manager, Microsoft Gulf:

“Digital transformation yields boons that bridge business functions. The ability to engage, empower, optimize, and transform – is the promise that platforms like Dynamics 365 deliver. It merges ERP and CRM, offers flexibility, cost benefits with a rich menu of AI-based business intelligence, and is built around a warehousing architecture called the Common Data Model, so it can pull together and standardize data to deliver rich, actionable value.

This is why Noor has joined many other customers worldwide that rely on the Dynamics suite to deliver best-in-class service to their customers. We look forward to support their journey as they continue to explore new ways to achieve more.”

During the selection process, decision makers at the bank took note of the capacity for operational optimization on offer with Dynamics 365, as well as the LinkedIn Sales Navigator, an advanced tool that allows sales teams to manage the entire pipeline through the popular professional networking platform.

This enables them to leverage the network to source new customers, nurture and grow existing relationships and maximize sales productivity and results, all via one platform.

Microsoft will work with Noor IT and business executives to ensure that the platform supports the digital agenda and operational requirements of the bank for years to come.

See the intelligent business applications made possible by Microsoft Dynamics 365 here.

And yet, many banks and financial institutions continue to run this version of the OS on their ATMs.

The world over.

Embedded versions of Windows XP or not, these machines are exposed to attacks. Mix in the lack of updates with bad configuration from IT administrators, and you have a recipe for disaster. Case in point, this new one that makes ATMs ridiculously simple to hack.

According to this report, machines operated by the State owned Russian bank Sberbank are powered by Windows XP, and they suffer from security holes that make it possible for pretty much anyone to hack it.

Basically, the full-screen lock system that prevents the ATM from accessing other parts of the operating system can be bypassed by simply invoking Sticky Keys — as in pressing the Shift key five times in a row to bring up this Windows feature.

You can try that on your Windows system, too, right now.

Once enabled, it provides access to Windows settings, and brings up the Taskbar and the Start Menu, which can easily allow hackers access to other parts of the operating system using just the touchscreen.

What’s worse, Sberbank has done nothing to fix this issue. Which is telling, considering the fact that they are the largest bank in Russia and Eastern Europe, the third largest in Europe, and 33rd largest in the world overall.

As of 2014 standings.

Which is ironic, considering the last updates for Windows XP were shipped in April 2014, save for one emergency patch that was released this year to block the WannaCry ransomware.

While most small businesses and smaller set ups have made the move, many organizations across the world are still yet to initiate the transition to a newer operating system — and a substantial portion of these are financial and governmental in nature.

A new study shows that banks and government organizations are still on Windows XP, less than six months before end of support.

This research was conducted by a market consulting and analytics firm that goes by the name of Ascentius Consulting and shows that some 52 percent of the computers in banks in India are still running the aging OS. The corresponding figure for government organizations came in at 30 percent.

The general manager of Windows Business Group at Microsoft, Amrish Goyal, in an interview said:

“We see that software companies have a good plan to fully migrate by April, and even manufacturing companies have a fairly good plan to meet the deadline.

But we see absolutely no plan in the BFSI sector. It takes about three to six months for a full migration to take place. Indian public sector banks are not taking the issue as seriously as it is.”

This exposes them to a terrifying amount of risk, and it becomes increasingly clear why Microsoft is pushing for the Windows XP user base to upgrade to a newer, more secure version of Windows. A regretful incident or two could have potentially serious security implications.