A mass failure of digital signage left thousands of McDonald’s locations no choice but to temporarily close last Friday. Signage in restaurants throughout the UK, Japan, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand simultaneously began to display an “out of service” message, which left customers unable to pay for their orders.
Originally suspected to be the result of a cyberattack, McDonald’s has since clarified that the outage was the result of an error “by a third-party provider during a configuration change.”
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“At approximately midnight CDT on Friday, McDonald’s experienced a global technology system outage, which was quickly identified and corrected,” reads an internal statement by EVP, Global Chief Information Officer Brian Rice. “Many markets are back online, and the rest are in the process of coming back online. We are closely working with those markets that are still experiencing issues. Notably, this issue was not directly caused by a cybersecurity event; rather, it was caused by a third-party provider during a configuration change.”
When contacted by Newsweek, McDonald’s responded by saying they could not disclose any further technical details regarding the outage. The fast food giant confirmed the following day that all locations were back up and running.
