A raft of global institutions - including hospitals, major banks, media outlets and airlines - have reported a mass IT outage, affecting their ability to offer services, according to BBC News.

International airports including in India, Hong Kong, the UK, and the US have reported issues, and several airlines have grounded flights and reported delays.

Emergency services have also been affected with some hospitals cancelling surgeries and the US state of Alaska warning its 911 system may be unavailable.

Cyber security firm Crowdstrike has confirmed the cause of the worldwide outage was a result of their defective software update for its Microsoft Windows hosts.

"The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed," their statement said, assuring it was not a cyberattack.

"We further recommend organizations ensure they’re communicating with CrowdStrike representatives through official channels," it added.

Earlier in the day, an official Microsoft 365 service update posted to X said "we're investigating an issue impacting users ability to access various Microsoft 365 apps and services".

A Microsoft spokesperson told the BBC on Friday that "the majority of services were recovered" hours earlier.

Meanwhile, companies are scrambling trying to resolve issues with the IT outages.

Many broadcast networks in Australia were scrambling on air as systems failed, while Sky News UK went completely off air as a result of the issues. It is now back on air.

Several supermarkets were also crippled, with payment systems down. Pictures from Australia show Coles supermarket's self-checkout tills closed.

Hospitals in Germany and Israel have reported disruptions, as well as GP services in the UK.

Travel plans across the globe have also been thrown into disarray, with flight, taxis and rail affected.

Airports across Europe, the US and the global south-east have reported system failures, with many passengers having to "manually" do processes typically done by machine.

Samira Hussain, the BBC's South Asia correspondent, was at Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi, India, for a flight to Kolkata.

"I just manually made my boarding passes and the stickers for our check-in bags were also done by hand," she said, adding it is "absolute chaos" at the airport.