Global IT outage causes closures, operational difficulties

A global IT outage was felt locally in Delaware by a variety of businesses and organizations. l PHOTO COURTESY OF ADI GOLDSTEIN/UNSPLASH

STATEWIDE — Some Delaware businesses were at a standstill on Friday morning as a routine update from cybersecurity company CrowdStrike caused a global Windows outage, one that some experts are already calling the largest IT outage in history.

A majority of services utilizing Microsoft products were impacted by a flawed update by CrowdStrike, including many state and business services. CrowdStrike is an American cybersecurity firm which designs systems protecting users from hackers. The outage specifically impacted machines running the CrowdStrike Falcon program.

Gov. John Carney issued a brief statement earlier this morning on the outage, noting that the state’s computer systems were affected, but that public safety services were operating normally.

Delaware Department of Transportation (DOT) Director of Community Relations C.R. McLeod told the Delaware Business Times that statewide motor vehicle offices are currently closed “as computers and phones are offline.” Delaware’s traffic camera system is offline as of press time, as well.

Delays became an issue for Delaware Transit Corporation, or DART, fixed-route bus and paratransit operators who had to drive a portion of the day without their normal GPS mapping systems while dispatchers struggled with rescheduling riders throughout the day due to software issues, leading some riders to be late for appointments or miss them altogether.

Although there is currently no timeline for resolutions to the statewide systems affected by the outage, McLeod said DOT was among entities working to assess the situation quickly. Around the state, some offices were closed on Friday due to the outage. Other businesses also had to close, such as Dick’s Sporting Goods in Dover which posted a sign stating it had closed for the day due to a “network error.”

The health care industry also worked throughout the day to resolve internal issues, although the major nonprofit hospital systems in Delaware all cited minimal impacts.

“Beebe Healthcare is not experiencing any outages that will delay or affect patient care today throughout our health system. Systems impacted by the global CrowdStrike/Microsoft outage occurring this morning are now recovering,” spokesperson Ryan Marshall told DBT in a prepared statement. “Beebe Healthcare IT systems were not directly impacted by this outage; however, we did experience a few outages with third-party applications overnight and into the morning.”

Bayhealth expressed similar minimal issues due to the outage. Bayhealth Vice President and Chief Information Officer Richard Mohnk told DBT in a prepared statement, “When made aware of the global IT outage, we took swift action to identify and remedy the systems impacted. While Bayhealth’s internal systems were not affected, some external platforms were. Most of these systems have been corrected and are not impacting patient care.”

TidalHealth announced via social media that it had to reschedule physician appointments through 10 a.m. and the ambulatory outpatient laboratories were closed, while its outpatient labs and emergency rooms remained open. As of press time, a spokesperson from TidalHealth said the organization was well on its way back to full, normal operations.

ChristianaCare released a statement on social media letting consumers know it is not a CrowdStrike customer and was not impacted by the outage at all, but acknowledged that some of its partner vendors and organizations may experience delays. 

CrowdStrike, the publicly traded company behind the flawed update, was founded in 2011 in Austin, Tx. It was “. . . added to the S&P 500 Index, making CrowdStrike the fastest cybersecurity company to attain this achievement,” according to June press statements.

The company realized more than $3 billion in annual recurring revenue in its third quarter this year which reflected a 33% increase year-over-year. CrowdStrike suggested its “AI and cloud-native” Falcon platform is leading the charge and “revolutionizing modern security.”

CrowdStrike told consumers in a press release July 19 that the outage was not a security issue or attack and that Mac and Linux hosts were not impacted by the situation at hand. As of press time, “the issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”