Global systems outage hits Germany: Airports and hospitals disrupted
Germany has also been affected by the global computer systems outage. According to the government in Berlin, however, it was not a hacker attack.
The government in Berlin is reassuring. The global computer systems outage, which has also caused significant disruptions in Germany, was not the result of a cyberattack, as the Federal Office for Information Security reported. There is no evidence pointing to that.
The likely cause is a faulty update prepared by the IT company Crowdstrike. The company has announced that it is working on a solution to the problem. The IT giant Microsoft has also stated that it is experiencing problems with one of its programs.
Critical infrastructure affected
In Germany, the software outage has impacted many sectors, including those considered critical infrastructure. In the morning, Berlin's BER airport was closed for nearly two hours because the passenger check-in system was not working. Other German airports, such as those in Hamburg and Duesseldorf, also experienced problems, albeit on a smaller scale.
The outage caused significant problems at the University Hospital of Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany. All planned Friday surgeries were canceled, and the hospital's outpatient clinics were also closed. However, hospital authorities assured that emergency care remained available.
Similar issues affecting airports, hospitals, and banks were reported in many countries worldwide on Friday.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that security agencies would submit a report on global computer problems and that security institutions would comment on this matter in close coordination with many other countries.
