A Massive Outage Just Left A Bunch Of Canadians Without Access To Their Banking Apps

The company that caused the outage said it wasn't a cyberattack.

A Massive Outage Just Left A Bunch Of Canadians Without Access To Their Banking Apps
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Western Canada Editor

If you noticed your online banking app or internet wasn't working on Thursday, July 22, you weren't alone.

A huge outage caused thousands of websites and digital services across Canada to go down, including online banking services at RBC, ScotiaBank and BMO, as well as airlines, retailers and tech companies.

According to the website DownDetector, dozens of big Canadian companies received reports of outages at 12.30 p.m. EST.

So, how did it happen?

The cause of the outage was due to a "service incident" at cloud computing company Akamai. Based in Massachusetts, Akamai works behind the scenes to keep large parts of the internet around the world operating.



A spokesperson for the company posted on Twitter that, at 11:46 a.m. EST, a software configuration update triggered a bug in the system that directs browsers to websites. The disruption lasted for an hour.

Akamai apologized for the inconvenience and said it is reviewing how they roll out future software updates to avoid more disruptions.

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  • Daniel Milligan
    Western Canada Editor Daniel Milligan was the Western Canada Editor at Narcity Canada. He was responsible for developing trending news strategies and managing a team of writers and editors. Originally from the U.K., Daniel holds a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in journalism from Staffordshire University. Over the past decade, he has worked on major news stories including terror attacks in London, England, and Manchester, along with royal weddings, Brexit developments, the Canadian federal election and the Nova Scotia mass shooting. Daniel was a senior editor and newsroom leader at Trinity Mirror, one of the U.K.'s largest regional news websites. He would later move to Toronto and work at Yahoo Canada and CTV News/CTV National News.
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