Global tech outage impacts services in Atlantic Canada

A global technology disruption impacted parts of Atlantic Canada Friday morning.

“We've seen outages in the past that were worldwide, maybe not as far flung as this one,” said cyber expert, Scott Beck.

Microsoft services globally were affected. Cyber security firm CrowdStrike deployed an update that didn’t mesh with computers running Microsoft Windows.

“These kind of things you’d like to think would’ve been tested in advance before they’re pushed out into a live environment, but there was a failure in this case,” said Beck.

The Nova Scotia Health Authority said on Friday that they are not impacted by the outage.

Halifax Stanfield International Airport saw cancellations and delays on Friday.

“We’ve seen some delays and some cancellations here at Halifax Stanfield over the course of the day,” says airport spokesperson Tiffany Chase.

Chase said about 25 percent of the 100 flights in and out of the airport during the day were impacted.

“What we’ve seen (Friday) morning is that there were a few delays and cancellations initially, and some airlines have continued to cancel flights,” Chase said.

Air Canada and Westjet where largely unaffected, while some American carriers and Porter Airlines were.

“We know that a lot of the flights have been cancelled or delayed, ours was at 11 o’clock this morning,” says traveler Devin Tope.

Tope and his family are trying to go home to Ontario. They said they are not sure when that’s going to happen.

“We close on our house on the 25th so we have to finish packing and I’ve got to work on Monday,” he said.

Scott Beck says there is some good news as the hardest part is identifying the problem, patching it however, he said will be time-consuming.