By Andrew Brown in Canberra

Companies affected by the global IT outage are unlikely to receive compensation, a business group warns, as more emergency meetings are held to deal with the recovery from the incident.

Banks, airports, supermarkets, media companies and retailers were left scrambling following Friday’s outage, which was caused by major cyber security firm CrowdStrike deploying a software update.

The National Co-ordination Mechanism – made up of government agencies and representatives from affected sectors – met on Sunday to discuss future steps following the outage.

But Australian Chamber of Commerce chief executive Andrew McKellar said businesses were unlikely to receive money for the loss in productivity.

“For many businesses, it’s going to be very difficult to secure direct compensation, but obviously, that’s something that should be looked at,” he told reporters in Canberra.

“If there are ways to consider how that might be evaluated, then obviously that’s something that should be on the table.

“It is a reminder, regrettably, for a lot off businesses this is going to be water under the bridge, it’s going to be a learning experience.”

Assistant Energy Minister Jenny McAllister said work was ongoing between the government and sectors hit by the outage to ensure they were back up and running.

“We are still in recovery stage… there is still more work to do to make sure that the residual issues arising from this outage are able to be addressed,” she told Sky News on Sunday.

“There will be opportunity in time to reflect on what’s occurred over the last couple of days, whether it exposes vulnerabilities that we are able to address.

“The key thing at the moment, and the focus for the government, is restoring services.”

In a blog post, Microsoft said it estimated 8.5 million devices were hit by the outage, and it was working to help recovery efforts.

Most companies affected by the outage were operational again by Saturday.

But Mr McKellar said many small businesses would still have a hard time getting systems back up on Monday.

“Its timing couldn’t have been worse on a Friday, and in particular, impacting on a Friday afternoon,” he said.

“That’s meant for many businesses, they’re going to have to wait until early next week to put in place the fixes that they need to do.”

Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor said the incident had reinforced the concerns of having large amounts of internet systems in the hands of a few firms.

“It’s also very clear that government and businesses have got to get smarter and better at being able to deal with these situations,” he told Sky News.

“That might mean having redundancy, it might mean ensuring that you’ve got alternatives, it certainly might mean not having one organisation or one company with too much market share.”

The widespread outages had led to concerns scammers would use the incident to target Australians with malicious texts and emails to gain personal details.

Senator McAllister urged internet users to be extremely cautious in handing over information online following the outage.

“There are obviously some actors out there trying to take advantage of this situation, and we are urging Australians to be incredibly careful at this point in time,” she said.

“People should think very carefully before providing any information, any personal information at all to anybody requesting it. Think about whether this makes sense. If you are in any way uncertain, just stop.”