Amid a global technology disruption by the Microsoft outage on Friday morning, some services in Ottawa are impacted.
There are widespread outages disrupting flights, banks, media outlets and companies around the world after an update to an internal program by company CrowdStrike went awry.
CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity company that is believed to be at the heart of the global Microsoft outage. The outage happened when a “faulty update” was used on computers running Microsoft Windows.
Locally this means people are feeling the impacts of the tech giant’s issues through work, personal devices or even flights in and out of the nation’s capital.
According to a post on X, the Ottawa International Airport is impacted by the outage causing flights to either be delayed or cancelled on Friday morning.
“Passengers should check with their airlines for the most up-to-date information,” the post reads.
On social media people are sharing photos and videos of long lines at the airport, that is causing frustration for passengers and employees.
Depending on the technology and programs running the behind-the-scenes of many services in the nation’s capital, companies and organizations may also be impacted.
The Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario told CityNews in an email that it is affected by the CrowdStrike outage.
“We are providing services as planned using workarounds where needed,” the hospital said in an email. “We do not anticipate any impact on our services offered to children and their families today.”
Early Friday between 1:30 a.m. and 5:45 a.m. The Queensway Carleton Hospital was impacted by the CrowdStrike outage.
“During that time, we experienced an outage of our health record system,” it said in a post on X. “Staff moved to our established downtime procedures.”
No impacts to surgeries and appointments are occurring and the system has been restored.
The Ottawa Hospital said it is not having any disruptions to services as of Friday morning, but it will “continue to monitor the situation.”
The City of Ottawa said its municipal services are not impacted by the outage.
“The City of Ottawa is actively monitoring the situation and is working closely with our Microsoft representatives to receive regular updates,” Jason Barney, Associate Chief Information Officer, said in an email.
The Ottawa police, fire and paramedics are not experiencing any IT issues and services are operating as normal.