Only 10 Indian banks, NBFCs faced minor disruptions: RBI on Microsoft outage

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday said that its assessment shows that only 10 banks and NBFCs had minor disruptions which have either been resolved or are being resolved.

The Indian financial sector in the Reserve Bank’s domain remains insulated from the global outage, the banking regulator says.

The statement comes after a large-scale outage in Microsoft services impacted IT systems globally leading to disruptions in various sectors from banking to air travel.

“The Reserve Bank has made an assessment of the impact of this outage on its Regulated Entities. Critical systems of most banks are not in cloud and further, only a few banks are using the CrowdStrike tool,” the RBI says.

The Reserve Bank has issued an Advisory today to its Regulated Entities to take necessary steps to remain alert and ensure operational resilience and continuity.

Several Indian airlines faced disruption in services due to the outage. Budget carrier IndiGo started issuing hand-written boarding passes to cope with the tech blackout.

“We're facing a network-wide issue with Microsoft Azure, causing delays at airports. Check-ins may be slower and queues longer. Our Digital team is working with Microsoft to resolve this swiftly,” it posted on X.

“Flights are cancelled due to the cascading effect of the worldwide travel system outage, beyond our control. The option to rebook/claim a refund is temporarily unavailable,” India’s largest airline said.

Meanwhile, civil aviation ministry directed airport authorities and airlines to be compassionate and provide extra seating, water and food to passengers affected by delays. The ministry implemented manual backup systems to maintain operational continuity. It also asked airlines to provide regular updates on flight status  to keep passengers informed.

Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology’s (MeiTY) cyber security wing CERT-In has also issued an advisory on the issue, saying the outage of Microsoft Windows happened due to Crowd Strike agent 'Falcon Sensor' update. "It has been reported that Windows hosts related to CrowdStrike agent "falcon sensor" are facing outages and crashing due to a recent update received in the product. The concerned Windows hosts are experiencing a "Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) related to Falcon Sensor," the agency said. CrowdStrike is an American cybersecurity technology company based in Austin, Texas.