Overnight, there was a global IT outage that has thrown much of the tech world into chaos. People using Windows systems, primarily for business operations, were greeted with the "blue screen of death" when attempting to log in. One of the first and largest systems to be impacted took down airline communications. American, United, and Delta all lost control and communications capabilities, leading to a ground stop for all departing flights. Flights that were already in the air were instructed to continue circling until the situation could be resolved. Also impacted were payment systems (in case you were trying to make banking transactions this morning) and the home networks of major media outlets. This is already being described as the largest global IT outage ever observed. Thankfully, a fix has been provided which we will detail below. (ABC News)

IT outages have been reported across the globe as airlines, airports, banks and media companies have suddenly experienced ongoing disruptions that have upended the daily lives of potentially millions of people.

American Airlines, United and Delta have asked the FAA for global ground stop on all flights, according to an alert from the FAA on Friday morning.

The FAA is telling air traffic controllers to tell airborne pilots that airlines are currently experiencing communication issues.

"No one here knows anything, the gate agents said we all know as much as they do," Scott Sanders told ABC News, saying his flight from SeaTac Airport in Washington was delayed for two hours on the tarmac before passengers were deplaned.

The outage was reportedly caused by a faulty system update at CrowdStrike. It is one of the largest cybersecurity technology companies in the world, based in Austin, Texas. The good news is that a fix for this failure was quickly published by Forbes. The bad news is that, at least for now, there is no way for CrowdStrike to push out a global fix, so each individual computer will need to be fixed locally and wait for a global fix to be sent out after that. Here are the steps required to address the problem if your work system is impacted. (You might want to write these down manually in case the system you are using goes down later this morning.)

1. Boot Windows into Safe Mode or WRE.

2. Go to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike

3. Locate and delete file matching "C-00000291*.sys"

4. Boot normally.

In case you don't recall how to restart your Windows system in safe mode, follow these steps:

1. Restart your computer from the Windows sign-in screen
2. Press and hold the Shift key while selecting Power > Restart
3. After your computer restarts, select Troubleshoot > Advanced options > Startup Settings > Restart
4. Select 4 or F4 to start your computer in safe mode

That's about all there is for now. This is definitely a large-scale mess and it will probably take a while to clean it up. It's also a timely reminder of how completely dependent we have become on our technology, and how quickly someone can grind the entire operation to a halt if they have ill intents. Best of luck to all.