Govt’s digital operations remain unaffected amid global Microsoft outage: sources

The reason behind the Microsoft outage has been attributed to an update released by cybersecurity company Crowdstrike.

The digital operations of the Indian government are unlikely to have been affected by the Microsoft outage, which has brought to a halt critical operations across the world, including those of airlines and the stock market, senior government officials told Moneycontrol.

A major chunk of the government's operations takes place on the network of the National Informatics Centre (NIC). The government body provides Information and Communications Technology (ICT) infrastructure to the Central government, State governments, UT administrations, districts, and other government bodies.

Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw in a tweet clarified on July 19 that the NIC was not affected.

A senior government official explained that NIC does not use the Crowdstrike's endpoint security solution, and ipso facto, there was no impact to the operations of NIC.

The reason behind the Microsoft outage has been attributed to an update released by cybersecurity company Crowdstrike.

"We have reached out to several government bodies, and as of this moment we have not been able to identify any outage," said another senior government official.

The outage has affected check-in systems at airports across India, including Mumbai, Delhi, and Bengaluru, causing commotion for passengers on the morning of July 19. Airlines, particularly IndiGo, Akasa, and SpiceJet, were affected due to glitches in their check-in systems.

Thousands of users across the world have reported problems with Microsoft 365 apps and services to Downdetector.com, a website that tracks service disruptions.