The IT ministry is in touch with Microsoft regarding global outage, Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Friday, adding that the NIC network is not affected.

In a post on X, IT Minister Vaishnaw said: "MEITY is in touch with Microsoft and its associates regarding the global outage. The reason for this outage has been identified and updates have been released to resolve the issue. CERT is issuing a technical advisory. NIC network is not affected.”

Meanwhile, CERT-In has issued an advisory on the Microsoft outage caused by the Crowdstrike update, and rated its severity as "critical".

"It has been reported that Windows hosts related to Crowdstrike agent 'Falcon Sensor' are facing outages and getting crashed due to recent update received in the product. The concerned windows hosts are experiencing a 'Blue Screen of Death (BSOD)' related to Falcon Sensor," CERT-In advisory said.

This comes amid a massive outage faced by Microsoft users globally, and widespread reports of disruptions in international airlines, banks and media outlets.

Escalating disruptions continued hours after the technology company said it was gradually fixing an issue affecting access to Microsoft 365 apps and services.

The website DownDectector, which tracks user-reported internet outages, recorded growing outages in services at Visa, ADT security and Amazon, and airlines including American Airlines and Delta.

Microsoft 365 posted on X that the company was “working on rerouting the impacted traffic to alternate systems to alleviate impact in a more expedient fashion” and that they were “observing a positive trend in service availability.”

(With agency inputs)