Olympics – Paris 2024 says impact of global cyber outage limited, ticketing unaffected
By Julien Pretot and Yiming Woo
PARIS (Reuters) -The Paris Olympics organising committee said on Friday that a global cyber outage was slowing its operations, but the impact was limited and ticket sales were unaffected ahead of the Games which begin in a week.
The global tech outage that appeared to be related to issues at global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike and Microsoft was affecting operations in many sectors on Friday including airports, airlines, media and banks.
“At this point, the impacts are limited and concern in particular the delivery of uniforms and accreditations,” the Paris 2024 organising committee said, adding that they were in touch with people affected in order to postpone their visits to accreditation centres.
“Paris 2024’s ticketing systems have been unaffected. The operations around the preparation of venues is continuing normally, and work schedules are not at risk. The torch relay is continuing along its route as normal.”
At the Games’ press centre, security checks outside were done manually using lists of names, and the accreditation desk was closed, a Reuters reporter said.
“I’ve arrived in Paris this morning and went to get my accredidation validated and have been told no,” Sky Sports New Zealand journalist Wilson Catton said. “They can’t issue any accreditation or anything for I don’t know how long.”
Tony Estanguet, the head of the Paris Olympics Organising Committee, told reporters that contingeny plans were put in place but the outage was slowing operations, and the committee was “hoping that Microsoft can solve the outage very quickly.”
(Additional reporting by Dominique Vidalon and Gabriel Stargardter; writing by Ingrid Melander; editing by Jason Neely and Elaine Hardcastle)
