Freight & Trade Alliance (FTA) and the Australian Peak Shippers Association (APSA) provide the following update for the reference of members following a national IT outage that has impacted critical infrastructure and services across Australia.
In summary, while causing significant disruption to retail, media and financial institutions, the IT outage appears to have had minimal impacts on utilities, health, emergency response and supply chain operators.
National Coordination Mechanism (NCM)
FTA and APSA joined fellow representatives of the National Coordination Mechanism (NCM) in meetings last night (19 July 2024) and again this morning (20 July 2024) to address disruptions, public safety concerns, and the impact on critical services. The meeting included updates from key stakeholders and industry representatives, with a focus on shared situational awareness and whole-of-government communication.
The meetings were co-chaired by Chris Field, Acting Deputy Coordinator General, Emergency Management and Response Group, National Emergency Management Agency and Hamish Hansford, Deputy Secretary, National Cyber Security Coordinator, Department of Home Affairs.Michael Sentonas from CrowdStrike delivered a comprehensive update on a recent system configuration issue that resulted in a crash within the Falcon platform. He detailed the timeline of events, from the release of the sensor configuration file to the remediation process, and emphasised that the issue was not related to a cyber-attack.
CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by the outage and has issued a statement on their blog. Affected customers should review and enact the remediation advice available on the CrowdStrike blog which will be updated as the situation evolves.
The Australian Signals Directorate Australian Cyber Security Centre warned that a number of malicious websites and unofficial code are being released claiming to help entities recover from the widespread outages caused by the CrowdStrike technical incident. ASD's ACSC strongly encourages all consumers to source their technical information and updates from official CrowdStrike sources only.
Although there was some disruption reported last night by Qantas Freight, stevedore operations and container parks, FTA and APSA reported to the meeting members feedback that all commercial systems today appear to be unaffected.
Border and Biosecurity Systems
The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF) have been extremely proactive in their engagement with FTA and APSA at this time noting that no systems issues or impacts have been identified and that current assessment wait times and overtime capabilities will assist to manage any effects to airfreight lodgments.
In more positive news, it is evident that the Integrated Cargo System (ICS) appears to be fully functional.
FTA has received advice that WiseTech Global is not affected across any of its core platforms and products as they do not use CrowdStrike.
We understand that some larger members (that are self-hosted) have been affected by CrowdStrike however preliminary feedback suggests with appropriate configurations, the fix has been relatively simple.
We encourage members to provide any additional feedback for incorporation into tomorrow's update.
Paul Zalai - Director FTA | Secretariat APSA