Whitehall crisis officials working on IT outage, Cabinet minister says

Sign up to our free weekly IndyTech newsletter delivered straight to your inbox Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy Whitehall crisis officials are working to end the “inconvenience” caused by the major IT outage hitting airlines, train companies and banks, Cabinet minister Pat McFadden has said. We will have a further meeting later today to make sure we are across the situation Pat McFadden US cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike is “actively working” to fix the flaw in a software update that sparked the outage that knocked businesses and institutions around the globe offline. Mr McFadden, who as the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is in charge of the Whitehall machine, told the BBC: “We’ve had a major global IT outage today, causing huge inconvenience around the world, particularly for people travelling, for media organisations and for some parts of the health care system.” Pressed on what the Government can do to help people, he said the “first thing we always want to identify is the cause” and then “to make sure that a fix is put in place and that the inconvenience that is being felt comes to an end as soon as possible”. The public needs to be reassured that the disruption to their travel or their desperately needed GP appointments will be minimised Christine Jardine, of the Lib Dems Downing Street said Sir Keir Starmer did not chair the morning Cobra – which deals with matters of national emergency or major disruption, because he had been meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his Cabinet.