Supply chain experts are warning that the Crowdstrike cybersecurity firm outage, which hit many Windows-based systems last week, could have serious knock-on effects for global supply chains and deliveries.

The worldwide outage, which occured on Friday (19 July), saw airports, ports, railways and retailers across the globe reporting problems as their IT systems crashed.

Niall van de Wouw, chief air freight officer at supply chain consulting firm Xeneta, said: ”Planes and cargo are not where they are supposed to be and it will take days or even weeks to fully resolve.”

He said that the outage highlighted the vulnerability of supply chains to IT crashes, with thousands of flights grounded or delayed across major air freight hubs in Europe, Asia and North America.

He added: ”Shippers already had concerns about air freight capacity due to huge increases in demand in 2024, driven largely by the extraordinary growth in e-commerce goods being exported from China to Europe and the US.

“Available capacity in the market is already limited so airlines are going to struggle to move cargo tomorrow that should have been moved today.” 

Marco Forgione, director general at the Chartered Institute of Export & International Trade, warned the disruption could create further problems down the line in planning and scheduling for importers, exporters and consumers globally. 

He said: ”We are already seeing increased costs in shipping due to the ongoing crisis in the Red Sea. This has caused the demand for the air freight market to soar, with double-digit growth in volumes in 2024, as businesses look at alternative routes to ship their products.”

David Jinks, Parcelhero head of consumer research, warned that the impact of the outage will be felt for some time by the airlines.

He said: ”Not only will slots for dedicated airfreight flights be disrupted, but many international goods and packages are transported not only in specially designed cargo planes but also in the cargo holds of passenger aircraft. One thousand flights globally were reported to have been cancelled by Friday mid-morning.”

He added that international ports have also been impacted by the issues, pointing to Poland’s largest container terminal, the Baltic Hub in Gdansk, which asked companies to stop sending containers to the port, because of the outage problems which it said were hampering terminal operations.

Pointing to the impact of the global shortages created by the Suez Canal blockage, in 2021, Jinks warned of similar disruptions following the Crowdstrike outage.

Closer to home he warned that delayed and cancelled rail services would also affect freight deliveries, with Avanti West Coast, Great Western Railway and Southern among the major operators reporting problems.

Retailers have also experienced issues with some supermarkets including Morrisons and Waitrose and pharmacies reporting payment problems, although most were largely resolved by mid-morning on the same day. 

Jinx said: ‘Time will tell the extent of disruption to international trade and industry caused by the global IT issue. It’s believed that a Crowdstrike update caused a BSOD loop on some Windows machines, meaning they repeatedly booted and crashed.

”The problem was that many systems updated automatically overnight. Crowdstrike is reported to have rolled back the update and the company stated on Friday morning that “a fix has been deployed”.

”However, it could be some time before its impact has been resolved on all systems, as IT staff may need to physically access individual machines to boot them into safe mode and remove the update file.”

 

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