OHIO — Friday morning, a widespread Microsoft outage was affecting most of the world, from banks to airlines to media outlets and companies.
Escalating disruptions continued hours after the technology company said it was gradually fixing an issue affecting access to Microsoft 365 apps and services.
The website DownDectector, which tracks user-reported internet outages, recorded growing outages in services at Visa, ADT security and Amazon, and airlines including American Airlines and Delta.
Microsoft 365 posted on X that the company was “working on rerouting the impacted traffic to alternate systems to alleviate impact in a more expedient fashion” and that it was “observing a positive trend in service availability.”
CrowdStrike released a statement that it was actively working with affected customers.
"CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack," the company said in a blog post. "The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed. We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website."
Social Security offices closed Friday because of the outage. Its phone line remains open and people can reach out by calling 800-772-1213.
The city of Akron said some city servers and devices were affected by the outage, but core city services were not disrupted. According to a press release 911 dispatch remains operational and water and wastewater services had no serious disruption.
The city said some services may be slightly delayed this morning including its 311 website access, Utilities Business Office, Income Tax, and city golf courses.
“We appreciate the patience and understanding of our residents as our staff work as quickly as possible to respond to this widespread outage,” said Mayor Malik in a news release. “Our critical and core city functions and services are working as intended and we expect to have all other functionality back up and running very soon. I want to express my sincere appreciation to our IT staff for their diligence which quickly caught these issues last night and their swift work at addressing the problems to provide a fix.”
Other cities are also reporting outages from the outage including Hudson phone lines.
The Greater Cleveland RTA said real-time bus tracking information and mobile payment via EZ Fare on its app were not available for riders because of the outage. According to its X account, all buses, trains and paratransits are running and scheduled times can be checked here.
Groundstops for airlines were ordered Friday morning by the Federal Aviation Administration and passengers are urged to check their flight statuses before heading to airports.
John Glenn International Airport said its systems were also affected.
Some Ohio government systems were also affected including the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services.
The Ohio Department of Administrative Services said in a post on X that some of the state's IT services were affected.
"The Crowdstrike software outage is impacting some state of Ohio IT services. DAS is working with state agencies to restore outages. We ask customers to be patient until we can restore all services," the post read. "Aside from this outage, state government continues to serve Ohio’s citizens."
Columbia Gas said it was facing technology issues because of the outage.
"We're experiencing technical issues with our website and mobile app today due to the global technology outage involving Crowdstrike," the company said on X. "If you have an emergency and are unable to report it to our 24/7 emergency line 1-800-344-4077, please call 911 from a safe place."
The Ohio Turnpike said its E-ZPass website was also affected by the global outage.
Hospital systems have also been affected with Cincinnati Children's closing its Schubert Research Clinic until 10 a.m. Its urgent care and emergency room remain open.
The Ohio State Wexner Medical Center said its systems are affected by the outage, but that all its locations remain open.
"We have back up procedures in place and we are currently implementing vendor repairs," Wexner said in a post on X. "Patients with appointments should report as planned unless they are contacted with other instructions. There may be delays due to our backup procedures and we appreciate our patients’ understanding."
Cuyahoga County, in a post on X, said its technology services were also disrupted
"Cuyahoga County is currently experiencing some disruptions in technology services connected to nationwide outages," the county's statement said. "At this time, emergency services including 9-1-1 (Cuyahoga Emergency Communications System) and 216-696-KIDS (Child Abuse Hotline) remain operable."
The Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles site was also down Friday morning.
Franklin County Sheriff's Office said some of its operations were also affected.
"The Franklin County Sheriff's Office would like to inform the community that a national widespread IT outage has affected some of our operations. We want to assure the public that our ability to take 911 calls remains fully operational and is not impacted by this outage," the department said in a Facebook post. "Our 911 Communication Center continues to work diligently, as always, to ensure the safety and well-being of our residents."
The University of Dayton's campus services were also affected, according to a banner on its site.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
The Associated Press Contributed to this article.