How millions of Americans could go without a paycheck this month due to global Crowdstrike crash – are YOU at risk?
Millions of workers are at risk of not receiving a paycheck this month due to a global outage that could last weeks.
Systems at several major US banks crashed this morning, leaving people unable to access their accounts and receive or send money.
TD Bank and Bank of America were still down for millions this afternoon, but TD reported that its systems have been restored. Meanwhile, customers are still complaining on Downdetector that they can’t use their banking systems.
The Global Payroll Association (GPA) warned that people are “at risk of losing their pay” because their employers or banks rely on CrowdStrike for cybersecurity.
Crowdstrike’s global outage has left millions of workers without their paychecks after banking systems went down on Friday
It’s not yet clear how widespread the payroll disruption is, but Melanie Pizzey, GPA’s founder and CEO, said her company had received complaints from a number of customers who were unable to access their payroll software due to the outage.
Payroll systems typically require notification of any issues preventing direct deposits at least two days prior to payday so the problem can be resolved in a timely manner.
“Depending on the duration of this outage, it could have very serious implications for businesses across the country, particularly those that process payroll on a weekly basis,” Pizzey said. said.
“In addition, we may see a backlog in payroll processing toward the end of next month, potentially giving employees longer to receive their monthly paychecks.”
George Kurtz, the CEO of the software company that created the bug, said it could take weeks for systems to be up and running again.
Meanwhile, issues with Visa and Zelle are preventing people from making or receiving payments. There is no indication when the payment methods will be operational again.
The outage originated with Microsoft, leading many to believe the company’s systems were the cause. Within hours, however, Crowdstrike admitted that an update to its ‘Falcon Sensor’, which scans for viruses and malicious attacks, was the culprit.
TD Bank, Visa, Zelle and Bank of America have all been affected, and technology market analyst Dan Ives told DailyMail.com that it will take “24 to 36 hours before the global outage is fully contained.”
People took to social media to complain about the impact of the outage on the financial implications. One person wrote on X: ‘No direct deposit yet. The global outage combined with TD now being in the worst of Canada’s top five banks means it could be a bit of a mess.’
Another person wrote: ‘My company was not affected by the IT outage, but our payroll software was. Happy Friday.’
A Bank of America customer wrote on Downdetector that they were unable to deposit a check at a local branch at 11:30 a.m.
The customer said that when she returned five hours later, the funds were “still unavailable” and there was no evidence the check had been deposited.
TD Bank issued a statement at 2 p.m. ET, 12 hours after the outage began, telling customers that many of the affected systems have been restored. However, the bank warned that service delays and longer wait times may still occur.
The Crowdstrike outage impacted Microsoft’s 365 Apps and Azure services, which are used by more than 50 percent of the Fortune 500 and eight of the largest financial institutions across 43 U.S. states.
Microsoft 365 is a cloud platform that helps businesses protect themselves from cyberthreats and keep information about shared files, emails, and links secure and private.
The Defender for Office app helps prevent, detect, and respond to phishing and ransomware threats.
Azure is a cloud firewall security service that provides protection against threats to files, data, and other apps.
The software glitch grounded planes, shut down the 911 call center and forced government agencies including the Social Security Administration to close for an entire day.
Crowdstrike has assured customers that the outage was not caused by a cyberattack, but technology market analyst Dan Ives told DailyMail.com that the global outage is “a massive disaster” and that it will take “24 to 36 hours before everything is fully under control.”