Related video above: Southwest resumes operations after network issueA wave of brief internet outages hit the websites and apps of dozens of financial institutions, airlines and other companies across the globe Thursday.The Hong Kong Stock Exchange said in a post on Twitter Thursday afternoon Hong Kong time that its site was facing technical issues and that it was investigating. It said in another post 17 minutes later that its websites were back to normal.Internet monitoring websites including ThousandEyes, Downdetector.com and fing.com showed dozens of disruptions, including to U.S.-based airlines.The websites of Vanguard, Automatic Data Processing, Frontier Airlines and E-trade were also briefly offline, according to Downdetector.Many of the outages were reported by people in Australia trying to do banking, book flights and access postal services.Australia Post, the country’s postal service, said on Twitter that an “external outage” had impacted a number of its services and that while most services had come back online, they were continuing to monitor and investigate.Many services were up and running after an hour or so but the affected companies said they were working overtime to prevent further problems. Southwest Airlines said it worked quickly to restore the systems following the outage and the pause in connectivity did not impact the airline’s flight operations, the company said in a statement to CNN Business.United Airlines told one Twitter user, “We are experiencing technical issues and working promptly to fix them. We will update you once this matter is resolved.”A spokesperson for Los Angeles International Airport told CNN Business that they experienced momentary disruptions, but there were no significant delays or cancellations. The airport did not immediately respond to a request for comment about which websites or systems were disrupted.Banking services were severely disrupted, with Westpac, the Commonwealth, ANZ and St George all down, along with the website of the Reserve Bank of Australia, the country’s central bank. The Reserve Bank canceled a bond-buying operation due to technical difficulties facing several banks that were to participate.Australia’s Westpac bank apologized to customers. “Affected Westpac systems are now back up and running following an issue today with a third party provider which impacted some of our services including internet banking,” it said in a statement.A spokesperson for Commonwealth Bank of Australia said “we are seeing services return following a tech outage which had widespread impacts across businesses.” ANZ said the outage affected its app and internet banking platform, but services had been restored.Virgin Australia said flights were largely operating as scheduled after it restored access to its website and guest contact center.”Virgin Australia was one of many organizations to experience an outage with the Akamai content delivery system today,” it said. “We are working with them to ensure that necessary measures are taken to prevent these outages from reoccurring.”Akamai, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, counts some of the world’s biggest companies and banks as customers. The company said in a statement Thursday that it was aware of the issue and working to restore services as soon as possible.The disruptions came just days after many of the world’s top websites went offline briefly due to a problem with software at Fastly, another major web services company. The company blamed the problem on a software bug that was triggered when a customer changed a setting.Brief internet service outages are not uncommon and are only rarely the result of hacking or other mischief. But the outages have underscored how vital a small number of behind-the-scenes companies have become to running the internet.CNN contributed to this report.
Related video above: Southwest resumes operations after network issue
A wave of brief internet outages hit the websites and apps of dozens of financial institutions, airlines and other companies across the globe Thursday.
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The Hong Kong Stock Exchange said in a post on Twitter Thursday afternoon Hong Kong time that its site was facing technical issues and that it was investigating. It said in another post 17 minutes later that its websites were back to normal.
Internet monitoring websites including ThousandEyes, Downdetector.com and fing.com showed dozens of disruptions, including to U.S.-based airlines.
The websites of Vanguard, Automatic Data Processing, Frontier Airlines and E-trade were also briefly offline, according to Downdetector.
Many of the outages were reported by people in Australia trying to do banking, book flights and access postal services.
Australia Post, the country’s postal service, said on Twitter that an “external outage” had impacted a number of its services and that while most services had come back online, they were continuing to monitor and investigate.
Many services were up and running after an hour or so but the affected companies said they were working overtime to prevent further problems.
Southwest Airlines said it worked quickly to restore the systems following the outage and the pause in connectivity did not impact the airline’s flight operations, the company said in a statement to CNN Business.
United Airlines told one Twitter user, “We are experiencing technical issues and working promptly to fix them. We will update you once this matter is resolved.”
A spokesperson for Los Angeles International Airport told CNN Business that they experienced momentary disruptions, but there were no significant delays or cancellations. The airport did not immediately respond to a request for comment about which websites or systems were disrupted.
Banking services were severely disrupted, with Westpac, the Commonwealth, ANZ and St George all down, along with the website of the Reserve Bank of Australia, the country’s central bank. The Reserve Bank canceled a bond-buying operation due to technical difficulties facing several banks that were to participate.
Australia’s Westpac bank apologized to customers. “Affected Westpac systems are now back up and running following an issue today with a third party provider which impacted some of our services including internet banking,” it said in a statement.
A spokesperson for Commonwealth Bank of Australia said “we are seeing services return following a tech outage which had widespread impacts across businesses.” ANZ said the outage affected its app and internet banking platform, but services had been restored.
Virgin Australia said flights were largely operating as scheduled after it restored access to its website and guest contact center.
“Virgin Australia was one of many organizations to experience an outage with the Akamai content delivery system today,” it said. “We are working with them to ensure that necessary measures are taken to prevent these outages from reoccurring.”
Akamai, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, counts some of the world’s biggest companies and banks as customers. The company said in a statement Thursday that it was aware of the issue and working to restore services as soon as possible.
The disruptions came just days after many of the world’s top websites went offline briefly due to a problem with software at Fastly, another major web services company. The company blamed the problem on a software bug that was triggered when a customer changed a setting.
Brief internet service outages are not uncommon and are only rarely the result of hacking or other mischief. But the outages have underscored how vital a small number of behind-the-scenes companies have become to running the internet.
CNN contributed to this report.
