WASHINGTON: A global tech outage that was related to a software update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike affected nearly 8.5 million Microsoft devices, Microsoft said in a blog post on Saturday.

“We currently estimate that CrowdStrike’s update affected 8.5 million Windows devices, or less than one percent of all Windows machines,” it said in the blog. A software update by global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, one of the largest operators in the industry, triggered system problems that grounded flights, forced broadcasters off air and left customers without access to services such as healthcare or banking.

“While the percentage was small, the broad economic and societal impacts reflect the use of CrowdStrike by enterprises that run many critical services,” Microsoft said in its blog post. CrowdStrike has helped develop a solution that will help Microsoft’s Azure infrastructure accelerate a fix, Microsoft said, adding that it was working with Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform, sharing information about the effects Microsoft was seeing across the industry.

The air travel industry was recovering on Saturday from the outage that caused thousands of flights to be cancelled, leaving passengers stranded or grappling with hours of delays as airports and airlines were caught up in the IT outage. Delta Air Lines, one of the hardest-hit airlines, said that as of 10 am EDT (1400 GMT) on Saturday, more than 600 flights had been canceled, adding that additional cancellations were expected. “Friday’s global tech outage is an example of an unforeseen event that market participants always fear, but don’t frequently think about,” said Glen Smith, chief investment officer at GDS Wealth Management.

By the start of US business, normality was returning. The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq said markets were operational and working normally. Major US banks including Bank of America and Goldman Sachs said they had not seen any major impact on their systems or operations. — Reuters

Citigroup has also not been affected, a source familiar with the matter said.

“The vast majority of our ATMs are operating normally and we are working to restore service to the remaining ATMs as quickly as possible,” JPMorgan said. It has 16,000 ATMs across the US and 4,800 branches.

While there were no confirmed reports of trading difficulties as a result of the outage, some traders earlier said there were signs of disruption at smaller financial institutions.

One London-based trader said several multilateral trading facilities were affected, leaving some clients unable to trade.

Some banks and financial services firms said employees and customers had problems accessing their systems. “People can’t switch their computers on after restarts. Those who didn’t restart are doing fine,” another trader said.