Why is Sky News off air?
SKY News has been thrown into chaos this morning amid a mass global IT outage.
The channel’s usual live morning programme is not on-air and was briefly replaced by a documentary repeat.
Sky News has since switched to a blank screen with their logo and a message reading: “We apologise for the interuption to this broadcast.
“We hope to restore the transmission of Sky News shortly.”
Sky Sports News Presenter Jacquie Beltrao tweeted on X: “We’re obviously not on air – we’re trying.”
Similar issues have affected broadcasters in Australia too, as well as airlines and banks globally.
It all comes as a huge IT outage struck companies across the world on Friday, seemingly linked to an error affecting Microsoft Windows machines.
The technical glitch has left many with the dreaded “blue screen of death”.
Other companies impacted include Ryanair, which has warned of “potential disruptions across the network” due to a global third party system outage.
Microsoft 365 has confirmed they are investigating an issue impacting users’ ability to access apps and services.
“Our services are still seeing continuous improvements while we continue to take mitigation actions,” the company wrote on X.
“We still expect that users will continue to see gradual relief as we continue to mitigate the issue.”
It’s not thought the problems are linked to a hack attack but may be related to issues at cyber security company CrowdStrike, according to cyber security expert Troy Hunt.
“Some are attributing this to security services offered by CrowdStrike,” said Professor Jill Slay from the University of South Australia.
“Others attribute it to Microsoft or Amazon Authorities and industry will be monitoring, but at this stage it is too early to draw conclusions.
“While the outage may easily be a result of misconfiguration by one of these companies, or ‘interference’ between products, the global impact is enormous.
“It is possible that there is a security breach, but to me, this is instinctively unlikely.”
Sky News has not confirmed whether the issues it’s facing are linked to these wider IT problems as yet.
A spokesperson from Sky News told The Sun: “Sky News has not been able to broadcast live TV this morning, we apologise for the interruption.
“All the news is still available online, on the Sky News app, website, and across our social media accounts.
“We are working hard to restore all services.”