This global Microsoft Outage

[SSpratt]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cnk4jdwp49et

Any worries? It is chaos out there by the look of the news.

My experience is that I’m not able to work today and had trouble using my debit card this morning. The transaction eventually went through but it’s not showing on my account.

Are all ATMs working at the moment?

Natwest's are.

In a wall safe bolted to the wall in the fitted wardrobe, cost about £30. Not 100% secure but good enough for envelope of cash, passports etc.

I used the Tesco atm today for my Santander account and it worked fine

Thank you! I've had issues with my Lloyds account online so will try atms

Have they just tried turning it off and on again?

Exactly - it’s all eggs in one basket. I think the question I asked previously was sparked (no pun intended) when I was thinking about how much knowledge had been lost when the library in Alexandria burned down. Thinking todays equivalent was the cloud. So much is just stored there were could lose everything- coupled to the fact all our business, social relations and memories are tied to the cloud it’s idiotic. I wouldn’t keep all my money under the mattress in case we were robbed/house destroyed. But I shouldn’t wholly rely on technology to maintain my money either.

Perhaps some less high tech back-up?

Sainsbury's was OK, for once, this morning but Boyes were having some problems with receipt scanning which I suspect could have been related.

DH is a long haul pilot, due to fly home from Nigeria tonight. Not sure yet if his flight is affected.

otherwise not knowingly affected! It just seems mad that one error can have such a global impact.

This. If it's on the cloud it does not exist. On a laptop etc - you need three copies, on an external hard drive, on a usb, and on hard drive of laptop (preferably two laptops). The cloud is not a back-up. Hard copy if possible (I know not possible if it's e.g. a novel in progress).
We are too reliant on digital technology. One massive solar flare and the lot goes down, ditto massive aggressive hacking from e.g. China etc.

Because they're essential?

I'm guessing you don't use EMIS Web?

It shows that managers who don't understand tech should perhaps listen to their technical experts rather than sidelining and ignoring them because they have a higher company rank. If the tech people are saying theres a potential problem, understand that putting the potential problem right is going to cost you a hell of a lot more than those 'savings' you've made. Outsourcing offshore is another of those ideas which is really dumb for various reasons and its definitely not cheaper...

Just to say it’s not Microsoft that’s had the outage, it’s actually Crowdstrike….which is affecting Microsoft products.

They are going through just slowly…

Some large companies/organisations either use more than one cloud provider e.g. a well-known one plus a less well-known one, or use the cloud and their own servers.

Morrisons can’t operate around here. Nor can our GP or chemist. Airports are badly affected:

I think people not in IT have no idea how close most systems are to a balls up on a daily basis.

This. Every techy who's been around any length of time will have their horror tales of how things went badly wrong. Admittedly mine have never been this spectacular.

(The important thing is to know what you did and remove all evidence from the logs once you've fixed it. 😉)

Relevant xkcd

the majority of GPs use EMIS and that is down!

This is why I never understand people so quick to give up cash altogether.

We've a few systems down in our hospital and I've just got cash out for a music festival later in case there's an issue with card payments there. Is in a park so no chance of hearing as drink if that's the case

I think paying in cash in a scenario like that would actually be worse. If the POs systems go down they’ll just sit on a pile of cash until it can all be reconciled

This is scarily true!!! And a huge amount of the problem is offshoring, where the offshore team has a ridiculous churn rate (everyone wants promoted). Tech firms really need to value their SMEs and stop this nonsense that the only way to have a career is to climb the ladder