McDonald's faced a worldwide technology outage that forced some of its restaurants to close for hours, impacting their ability to take orders online and through self-serve kiosks. The company clarified that the incident was not due to cybersecurity issues but was caused by a third-party technology provider during a configuration change, leading to disruptions in operations that lasted for approximately 12 hours.
Brian Rice, McDonald's global chief information officer, expressed regret for the outage and reassured customers and employees that the company was working urgently to resolve the issue. This outage was highlighted as an exceptional occurrence, with a focus on prioritizing the reliability and stability of their technology to prevent future disruptions. Despite the temporary closures and technical difficulties, some McDonald's locations around the world, like in Bangkok, Milan, and London, managed to resume normal operations, while others, such as in Japan, faced challenges due to the system failure.