Further to our member notice on Saturday 20 July 2024, 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 on Friday 19 July 2024 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.
Minister's press conference - transcript
The following link a transcript of the press conference held on Saturday 20 July 2024 by the Hon Clare O'Neil MP, Minister for Home Affairs and Minister for Cyber Security - refer HERE
National Coordination Mechanism (NCM)
FTA and APSA joined fellow representatives of the National Coordination Mechanism (NCM) yesterday (21 July 2024) for the third formal briefing 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.Michael Sentonas from CrowdStrike provided detail of misinformation being circulated in social media, reiterating that the incident was not a cyber-attack and that systems are recovering globally at an "exponential" rate.
FTA / APSA provided a status report that minimal disruptions have been reported by members; border and biosecurity systems were unaffected; and shared details from a notice provided by the Container Transport Alliance Australia (CTAA) as follows:
CTAA has ascertained that there were some significant, yet thankfully short-lived, impacts on container logistics interfaces across Australia.
Patrick Terminals' operations were impacted for a few hours before landside receival & delivery (R&D) operations could resume. Some export cut-off times for vessels in Melbourne and Brisbane have been extended, while import discharge operations were also impacted.
Notably, import storage time extensions have been updated, while no-show and wrong time zone fees for road transport operators have been waived.
Victoria International Container Terminal (VICT) in Melbourne was similarly impacted. VICT was able to resume truck transactions from the midnight zone on Saturday morning (20 July). Transport operators affected by the outage are contacting VICT landside operations for assistance with alternative slots.
Empty Container Parks (ECPs) operated by Qube Logistics across Australia had to cease transport operations on Friday afternoon due to the IT outage.
The main operational outcome was for the NCM to consider a request from supermarket and retail representatives for extended truck curfews to allow replenishment of stock from third party suppliers impacted by the disruption.
WiseTech Global
In an overnight email exchange with Richard White (CEO, WiseTech Global), the following detail was provided suggesting impacts to most freight forwarding and customs brokerages should be minimal (if any at all):
I am delighted to report that there was no impact in the main WiseTech Business, in any of the CargoWise Cloud hosted instances and none of the subsidiaries that had converted to CargoWise Cloud.
We do not use the CrowdStrike software in any parts of the main business and most of the subsidiaries are similarly not affected. We use a different (and in our view much more integrated and safer product) called ATP which is part of the Microsoft 365 E5 license that we use extensively.
In two recently acquired business units there where a small number of servers [detail redacted] which had not transitioned and which had temporary issues but these were resolved quickly in line with our early research with a fairly easy and quick work around that got these small issues resolved.
In certain limited circumstances (which worked for us) – the quick fix was: -
Because we store recovery keys in Azure – even in the worst-case scenario for this issue – we would have had only minor effects.
But happily – we did not have any CargoWise Cloud or main applications issues.
We encourage members to provide any additional feedback for incorporation into ongoing updates.
Paul Zalai - Director FTA | Secretariat APSA