Global IT Outage Disrupts Computers Locally And Internationally

By Gordon HopkinsA disruption of computer services that began last week, described by news outlets as a “global IT outage,” was not a cyberattack but a software defect. While the cause has been located, some industries continue to suffer disruption, while other have ground to a halt.The defect was in a software update rolled out by CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm. CrowdStrike Founder and CEO George Kurtz issued a statement that read, in part, “I want to sincerely apologize directly to all of you for the outage. All of CrowdStrike understands the gravity and impact of the situation. We quickly identified the issue and deployed a fix, allowing us to focus diligently on restoring customer systems as our highest priority.” A number of private industries and well as public services, including hospitals, banks, insurance agencies and, in some parts of the country, even 911 services.One of the most dramatic affects of the outage can be seen at airports, where flights have been canceled for several days and many stranded travelers have been forced to sleep at airports. Government SystemsThe outage has impacted a number of government systems but not all. For example, the Social Security Administration (SSA) closed its field offices on Friday.“Staff impacted by the widespread Microsoft and CrowdStrike issues are being brought back online,” said a spokesperson for the SSA. “Our phone lines remain operational and many online services at ssa.gov remain available.”On the other hand, the U.S. Postal Service has not experienced any impacts from the outage as of press time.“The Postal Service was not directly impacted by the global IT outage,” said USPS spokesperson David Walton. “We are aware of impacts to some of our third-party vendors, however, this has not impacted our ability to move mail and packages for the American people.” How Long Will It Take to Fix?While the defect has been found and fixed, it may still be several days before all affected systems are returned to normal.David Chlupacek, CEO of CKTL Technologies in Fairbury, explained, “One of the main examples of extended outages is with Windows systems that are also using a security feature called BitLocker that encrypts drives and to be able to get in to the system to actually fix these systems, an IT tech is usually required to physically have access and with companies that have large amounts of remote systems that may ending up being a long process.” Not a CyberattackWhile the outage was not caused by a cyberattack, Crowdstrike CEO George Kurtz warned, “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this.”However, Chlupacek believed there is little likelihood anyone will be able to take advantage of the problem, “The intention of companies that used the CrowdStrike service was to keep computer systems as up to date (and secure) as possible so I wouldn’t say that this would make systems more vulnerable, this was a flawed update patch that caused the outage it isn’t a very logical attack vector for a cyberattack.” Local DisruptionServices in Southeast Nebraska have also seen some disruption.Lana Likens, Public Relations Director for Jefferson Community health and Life, advised FJN on Friday, July 19, “As far as we know today, we have had no serious problems. We have had some intermittent internet outages (as we understand many in our area have had.) We are keeping an eye on things.”Some local banks and insurance companies have also reported some disruption but not enough to cause major issues.However, at a meeting of Jefferson County Commissioners on Tuesday, July 16, one of the county’s IT professionals, Jeff Nelson, reported there was an issue with Windstream unrelated to the Crownstrike outage that caused some services to be unavailable, “Can’t do claims. Can’t do payroll. The Treasurer can’t do anything with there program for registering vehicle registrations.”This problem has since been resolved.

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