Keir Starmer urged to name Cobra assembly as world IT outage causes chaos
Keir Starmer has been urged to call an emergency COBRA meeting on the global IT outage.
The Liberal Democrats have called on the government to hold a COBRA meeting to coordinate an urgent response to the IT outage causing major disruption including to airlines, railways and GP surgeries.
Lib Dem Cabinet Office spokesman Christine Jardine MP said: “The government must call an urgent COBRA meeting to address the chaos being caused by these IT outages across the country.
“The public needs to be reassured that the disruption to their travel or their desperately needed GP appointments will be minimised. Getting critical infrastructure up and running again must be priority number one. The National Cyber Security Centre should also be working with small businesses and other organisations to help them deal with the outage.”
“This once again lays bare the need to improve our digital infrastructure and truly modernise our economy in order to prevent the incidents from happening again.”
Cabinet Minister Pat McFadden, who earlier spoke in the Commons about the Government’s failures to prepare for the Covid-19 pandemic, said: “Resilience isn’t just about another pandemic but the full range of risks that we face and we’re reminded of that this morning as reports come in about a global IT outage affecting airlines, GP surgeries, banks, media organisations and other organisations. It’s not easy to know what the future holds. You can’t plan fully for every possible risk but we must do what we can to learn the lessons of this period.”
Major institutions across the world have reported computer issues disrupting services, with some airlines warning of delays and some airports grounding flights. Overnight, IT giant Microsoft confirmed it was investigating an “issue” with its 365 apps and operating systems, and although it said it had recovered some services, it warned that the issue was ongoing and users should expect “service degradation”, according to a status page on its website.
A number of cybersecurity experts are reporting that a faulty update from CrowdStrike could be the cause of the outage. Britain’s biggest train company Govia Thameslink Railway is also among those who have affected, warning passengers to expect disruption due to “widespread IT issues”. Sky News temporarily came off air due to IT issues.
GP surgeries have said they are unable to access patient records or book appointments due to the major global IT outage. NHS England has been contacted for comment after practices across England took to social media to report they cannot access the EMIS Web system. It is understood that NHS hospitals are currently unaffected by the outage.
