The Microsoft outage on Friday has affected banks globally, according to Downdetector, a website that tracks cyber outages. Global lenders, including those in Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and Israel, have reported an impact on their services. However, banks in India have not reported any major impact so far.
Microsoft outage Impact on Banks in Australia, New Zealand
According to Downdetector, Commonwealth Bank, Australia’s largest lender, has reported disruptions to its operations. Australian lenders ANZ and Westpac have also been impacted. The Downdetector has also reported issues with New Zealand’s ASB Bank.
Microsoft outage Impact on Banks in South Africa
South Africa’s Capitec said it is experiencing nationwide service disruptions due to an unexpected issue with an international service provider. Card payments and Capitec ATMs are working and customers’ accounts remain secure, it noted, adding that it is “resolving the matter asap”.
Microsoft outage Impact on Banks in Israel
In Israel, a spokesperson for the central bank said a global technical malfunction at CrowdStrike is having a “partial technical impact” on the country’s banking system. The Bank of Israel is dealing with it, the spokesperson added.
Microsoft Outage: Indian Banks Remain Unaffected
In India, banks and payments systems were unaffected by the Microsoft outage.
Banking regulator RBI on Friday said, “Overall, the Indian financial sector in the Reserve Bank’s domain remains insulated from the global outage.”
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), however, said only 10 banks and NBFCs had minor disruptions which have either been resolved or are being resolved.
“Large-scale outage in Microsoft Services is impacting IT systems globally leading to disruptions in various sectors. The Reserve Bank has made an assessment of the impact of this outage on its Regulated Entities. Critical systems of most banks are not in cloud and further, only a few banks are using the CrowdStrike tool,” the RBI said.
The country’s largest lender State Bank of India (SBI) on Friday said its systems are unaffected by the Microsoft global outage. “We are all fine,” its chairman Dinesh Khara told PTI, when asked about the impact of the global outage.
National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) chief executive Dilip Asbe said the country’s payments architecture, including the widely popular Unified Payments Interface, has been unaffected.
HDFC Bank, the biggest among the private sector lenders, also said that it has not faced any impact of the outage.
“Our systems are unaffected by the global outage. There is no impact on banking operations,” said Ramesh Lakshminarayanan, the group head for information technology at HDFC Bank.
Officials at ICICI Bank and Axis Bank also said that their systems were working fine and showing no impact of the outage.
A widespread Microsoft outage disrupted flights, banks, media outlets and companies around the world on Friday. Escalating disruptions continued hours after the technology company said it was gradually fixing an issue affecting access to Microsoft 365 apps and services.
