Hon David Seymour
Acting Prime Minister

Acting Prime Minister David Seymour has been in contact throughout the evening with senior officials who have coordinated a whole of government response to the global IT outage and can provide an update.

The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has designated the National Emergency Management Agency as the lead agency to coordinate the government response, working across relevant agencies to understand impacts on New Zealand government services, the private sector, and local communities.

“Earlier this evening I was briefed on three main issues relevant to New Zealanders affected by the global outage,” says Mr Seymour.

• Is it a malicious attack? No, it’s a glitch resulting from a software update from Crowdstrike.
• Is it critical? No. While it is very inconvenient to many people essential services are still working, systems and services are already coming back online as organisations apply the patch provided by CrowdStrike.
• When will it be over? Organisations and businesses are moving quickly to apply the Crowdstrike patch, and systems are coming back online. Many have recovered their systems or are working to update them in the coming hours. While the fix is a straightforward one, it may take some organisations or systems more time to get back to normal.

“The Government has worked quickly to understand the impacts of this issue and minimise them wherever possible.

“We appreciate the inconvenience this is causing for the public, retailers and businesses. The Government is closely monitoring developments and will continue to provide updates.”

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