Indian Financial Systems Remain Largely Unaffected From Microsoft Outage

The Indian financial and payments systems remained largely unaffected by the Microsoft services outage, though about 10 banks and NBFCs faced minor disruptions which have either been resolved or are being fixed.

A widespread Microsoft outage disrupted flights, banks, media outlets and companies around the world on Friday. Escalating disruptions continued hours after the technology company said it was gradually fixing an issue affecting access to Microsoft 365 apps and services.

A new CrowdStrike (cybersecurity software firm) update is being cited as the cause of the outage, which has impacted Windows-based desktop and laptops.

The large-scale outage in Microsoft services is impacting IT systems globally leading to disruptions in various sectors.

The Reserve Bank said it has made an assessment of the impact of this outage on its regulated entities.

“Critical systems of most banks are not in cloud and further, only a few banks are using the CrowdStrike tool. Our assessment shows that only 10 banks and NBFCs had minor disruptions which have either been resolved or are being resolved,” RBI said in a statement.

Overall, it said the Indian financial sector in the Reserve Bank’s domain remains insulated from the global outage.

Meanwhile, SBI Chairman Dinesh Kumar Khara told PTI that “We (SBI) are all fine”. SBI is the country’s largest lender and commands nearly 25 per cent market share.

National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) chief executive Dilip Asbe too said the country’s payments architecture, including the widely popular Unified Payments Interface, has been unaffected.

HDFC Bank, the biggest among the private sector lenders, also said that it has not faced any impact of the outage.

“Our systems are unaffected by the global outage. There is no impact on banking operations,” said Ramesh Lakshminarayanan, the group head for information technology at HDFC Bank.

Officials at ICICI Bank and Axis Bank also said that their systems were working fine and showing no impact of the outage.

The RBI said it has issued an advisory to all of its Regulated Entities for taking necessary steps to remain alert and ensure operational resilience and continuity.

A widespread Microsoft outage disrupted flights, banks, media outlets and companies around the world on Friday.