Global IT outage affects Ukrainian bank, telecoms.

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A global outage in IT systems affected Sense Bank, one of Ukraine's largest banks, and Vodafone Ukraine on the morning of July 19. News emerged early on July 19 that airports were facing issues with their IT systems, leading to to delays to flights from cities such as Berlin, Sydney, and Edinburgh. The problem appeared to spread to other systems, with Sky News in the U.K. unable to broadcast live, while the Polish port of Gdansk requested carriers not to head to the port terminal until the issues were solved.

A problem with the cybersecurity software Crowdstrike, used on Microsoft systems, is thought to be the cause of the outages. Sense Bank, one of Ukraine's largest banks, reported that its app was not functioning on the morning of July 19 due to an "unplanned technical outage." The bank announced at 11 a.m. local time that "the cause of the incident is the global IT failure related to the interaction of Crowdstrike antivirus and Windows," but the issue has been "successfully resolved" and the app is working as usual.

Vodafone Ukraine reported that "some Vodafone subscribers in all regions of Ukraine experienced difficulties in receiving services" during the morning "due to the failure in the work of global information systems." IT specialists "quickly responded to the situation," and from 9:20 a.m. local time the service was gradually restored, the company said. Nova Poshta, Ukraine's largest private parcel delivery company, also reported at 9:20 a.m. that there was a "technical failure in the operation of the customer service system due to some software updates."

An hour later, the company announced that "all client systems and services have been restored." Nova Poshta did not provide further details on the cause of the outage.

Ukraine Business Roundup -- Will Ukraine reach a deal on its debt? The following is the July 16, 2024 edition of our Ukraine Business Roundup weekly newsletter. This version is condensed as the author was out of the office.

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