London police and hospital service not affected by global IT outage

London Health Sciences Centre said it is investigating the issue, but so far, no IT issues have been reported.

A global tech outage was disrupting operations in multiple industries on Friday, with airlines halting flights, some broadcasters off-air and everything from banking to health care hit by system problems.

According to an alert sent by global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike to its clients and reviewed by Reuters, the company's Falcon Sensor software is causing Microsoft Windows to crash and display a blue screen, known informally as the "blue screen of death."

The problem crashed Windows machines and servers, sending them into a loop of recovery so that they couldn't restart.

"CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts," company CEO George Kurtz said in a message posted on social media. "Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed."

"We're deeply sorry for the impact that we've caused to customers, to travellers, to anyone affected by this, including our company," Kurtz said in an interview with NBC's morning news program Today.

Kurtz said that while some systems won't automatically recover, the company would "make sure every customer is fully recovered."

London Health Sciences Centre said it is investigating the issue, but so far, no IT issues have been reported. All internal systems at the Middlesex-London Health Unit are operating normally.

The London Police Service said it is not affected by the IT issue and people can still call 9-1-1 to reach police in an emergency situation.  The City of London said it is not impacted.

Major banks and media outlets across Canada and the world have had their services interrupted. Though CBC Radio One continues broadcasting in southwestern Ontario.