Sky News UK among global broadcasters hit by IT outage

Sky News UK and Sky Sports News have been taken off air by what’s being described as the ‘biggest IT outage of all time’.

Sky News began to experience problems around 5am and switched to broadcasting documentaries at 7am. It then went completely off-air about an hour later.

The channel returned to air at 8.50am with a much-changed backdrop, and no graphics, autocue or packages. It then went back off air again after a short news update and before resuming at 9am.

In a statement on X (formerly Twieter), Sky News chairman David Rhodes said that the network had “not been able to broadcast live TV this morning. Much of our news report is still available online, and we are working hard to restore all services.”

In its own post on X, Microsoft 365 said: “We’re investigating an issue impacting users ability to access various Microsoft 365 apps and services”.

Cybersecurity company Crowdstike later released a statement in which it said it is “actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”

Australian broadcasters were also forced off air, with both Sky News Australia and ABC hit.

AWS, NOW, Virgin Media, and BT are also among the companies impacted, according to DownDetector.