Shipping companies impacted around the world by Microsoft outage

Many shipping companies have been hit by today’s outage of Microsoft, one of the biggest IT outages recorded.

Multiple global businesses have reported failures of their Windows PCs today caused by a failed software update from antivirus company CrowdStrike.

“Unfortunately, we are aware of shipping companies being impacted on both their ship and shore systems,” Daniel Ng, CEO of CyberOwl, told Splash. Ng, who founded the UK maritime security specialist in 2016, said that the outages were “relatively contained” because Crowdstrike is not very commonly used by shipping companies yet. 

Crew travel and finance departments at shipping companies will also have been impacted with a number of airlines grounding flights and some banks going offline.