The Prime Minister has stated that issues from Friday's major tech crash will persist over the next week. A failed software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike triggered the outage, affecting more than eight million computers, according to Microsoft. Reporter Stephanie Ferrier provides more details.
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00:00This is the IT nerve centre for ABC Melbourne, and they've already set up bollards at the
00:08moment for an expected rush of people coming through to try and get their computers fixed.
00:15They've got the triage desk here already waiting, and they're expecting about 100 people here
00:21just in Melbourne alone to come through after that awful outage that we saw on Friday afternoon
00:28where some 8.5 million computers around the world all of a sudden were taken out of action.
00:35Now that was all caused by that security update failure by major cyber security firm CrowdStrike,
00:42and we've heard from Claire O'Neill, the Home Affairs Minister and Cyber Security Minister,
00:47and she says that there are definitely going to be some teething problems over the next
00:52couple of weeks as IT departments like this, after working around the clock over the weekend,
00:58continue their hard work to get people back online.
01:01She says that people should exercise a little bit of patience because there were so many
01:06areas that were taken out of action, including retailers, banks, transport companies, airlines
01:13and even media companies like the ABC here, and she says that there is a software patch
01:20that is available, that's on the government's Australian Securities Directorate website
01:26or Signals Directorate website, I should say, so their link is available there.
01:32And also just a little bit earlier we heard from consumer law expert Jeanne Patterson.
01:38Now she says those many businesses that have suffered losses into the millions of dollars
01:44globally, they might find it pretty hard to get compensation, and that's because this
01:48is all governed by contract law.
01:51Contract doesn't guarantee a perfect service.
01:53Unfortunately, outages happen, and generally there'll be exclusion clauses in the contract
01:59that say there's no liability for outages.
02:02What's happened here is unprecedented in terms of its scale, but any of us who've had software
02:08as a service know sometimes it goes down and the contract will say no liability.
02:15Now here at the ABC we've been told by our IT department that if your computer or your
02:20laptop was actually switched off at the time of this massive security glitch, then you
02:26should be okay.
02:27So at least, for one, my laptop is working okay, there has to be some good value for
02:32starting work so early on a Friday morning, but it's definitely going to be a very busy
02:37time for IT departments like this one all around the country as they work to get thousands
02:44and thousands of computers and laptops back online.