PSOJ says most members spared brunt of global IT blackout

   

The Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica says most of its members were spared any major disruptions in the global IT blackout on Friday.

 

Scores of companies, institutions, banks and airlines across the world suffered major disruptions when an update from cyber-security firm, Crowdstrike, caused Microsoft systems to blue screen and crash.

 

The boss of Crowdstrike admitted it could be some time before all systems are back up and running.

 

Speaking with Radio Jamaica News on Friday afternoon, PSOJ President Metry Seaga said the organisation is conducting an assessment to determine the extent of the disruption locally. 

 

"Well, some people have been impacted but in a small way, based on the information we have been able to gather. We understand that this attack was on major companies like banks and insurance companies and the airlines and things like that," he said, adding that because the outage occurred hours before in other jurisdictions, Jamaica had some warning. 

 

"With that said, we've heard a few cases. There is one company that was exporting some products, some perishables and the flight got cancelled, that affected them," he noted. 

 

But based on the impact globally, Mr. Seaga asserted that "Jamaica has gotten off quite easily". 

 

 

Meanwhile, there were at least five flight cancellations and several delays across both major international airports in Jamaica on Friday.

 

MBJ Airports Limited, the operators of Sangster International Airport, reported that two flights to the US were cancelled. Two arrivals from the US were also cancelled. 

 

In an update Friday afternoon, Senior Advisor & Strategist in the Ministry of Tourism, Delano Seiveright, said Jamaica held up reasonably well. 

 

"We did have quite a bit of disruption in light of the fallout caused by the cyber issues globally. What we do know is that about a third or over a third of flights were either delayed or cancelled today. Most of those disrupted flights were in fact delayed, and we expect that the system, our affairs will stabilise over the next 24 to 48 hours," he said. 

 

A Spirit Airlines flight, scheduled to arrive at Norman Manley International, was also cancelled on Friday.

 

The tech disruptions across the world have hit airlines, banks, businesses, schools, government and some emergency services, with one expert saying it could be the largest IT outage in history.

 

In the meantime, the Jamaica Cyber Incident Response Team (JaCIRT) and the Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency (MOCA) are working with entities across Jamaica that have been affected by the global outage affecting Windows-based systems utilising the CrowdStrike Endpoint Detection and Response software.

The Office of the Prime Minister said JaCIRT and MOCA will assist with mitigating the effects of the outage and facilitating recovery.