Businesses including banks, airlines, telecommunications companies, TV and radio broadcasters, and supermarkets have been taken offline following a mass global outage.
Major US airlines including American Airlines, Delta Airlines and United Airlines have been grounded, while airports in Germany, Amsterdam and Spain are also reporting issues.
Passengers at Edinburgh Airport were unable to use automated boarding pass scanners and monitors at security displayed a message saying “server offline”, according to a Reuters witness.
The airport had reverted to checking boarding passes manually, the witness said.
Also in the UK, Southern, Thameslink, Gatwick Express and Great Northern – all four of Govia Thameslink Railway’s brands – said its services were experiencing widespread IT issues.
“We are unable to access driver diagrams at certain locations, leading to potential short-notice cancellations, particularly on the Thameslink and Great Northern networks,” the company said.
“Additionally, other key systems, including our real-time customer information platforms, are also affected.”
It comes as Microsoft said it was continuing to address the “lingering impact” of its 365 applications and services that are in a “degraded state” – it is unknown if this is the same issue affecting airports and train services across the globe.
The outage appears to be affecting Windows PCs globally, including Sky News in the UK which was not able to broadcast live TV on Friday morning.
Users on the subreddit for cyber security firm Crowdstrike reported issues in India, the United States and New Zealand.
Users in Australia began reporting issues early on Friday, stating they had been locked out of their workstations.
Within hours, Australia’s National Security Coordinator said it was aware of the large-scale technical outage affecting a number of companies and services across the country.
It said there was currently no information to suggest the outage is a cyber security incident.