The present invention discloses a protection switching method and apparatus, relates to the technical field of communications. In the embodiments of the present invention, first the state information reported by each cross board is received, wherein the state information includes the state information of a service channel and protection channel; then each cross board switches to and selects the same service channel or protection channel for transmitting the service information when the state information reported by each cross board is abnormal. The embodiments of the present invention uniformly complete the protection switching according to the state information reported by the cross boards, ensure that the cross boards can still transmit the service information rightly after the protection switching, avoid the interruption of the service information transmission, and assure the synchronization of the service information between each cross board.