A widespread technology disruption that delayed flight plans, created border crossing issues also forced the closure of some local public offices on Friday.
The trouble was sparked by an update issued by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike and only affected its customers running Microsoft Windows, the world’s most popular operating system for personal computers. It was not the result of hacking or a cyberattack, according to CrowdStrike, which apologized and said a fix was on the way.
Businesses and governments worldwide experienced hours-long disruptions — their computer monitors glowing blue with error messages — and they scrambled to deal with the fallout. CrowdStrike’s CEO said some of their systems will require time-consuming manual fixes.
Niagara County Public Information Officer Kevin Schuler reported Friday that some county departments were impacted by the global tech outage and that the county’s IT team is working to repair any systems that are down.
“It is intermittent across departments,” Schuler said in a statement. “If you had business to conduct with the county today, you may want to call the department and make sure they can process your transaction.”
New York state’s chief cyber officer Colin Ahern, kept a close eye on the issue Friday.
“We are working with our agencies, local governments, and the third party service provider to resolve any issues on impacted systems,” he said. “Our priority is to ensure all 911 systems across New York are operational and able to address emergency response needs.”
Several local TV stations in the U.S. were prevented from airing the news early Friday, and some state and local governments reported problems at courts, motor vehicles departments, unemployment agencies, emergency call centers and other offices, but as the day progressed many of the systems were getting back to normal.
Affected hospitals had problems with appointment systems, forcing them to suspend patient visits and cancel some surgeries.
Thousands of flights were canceled and tens of thousands were delayed, leading to long lines at airports in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Latin America. Airlines lost access to check-in and booking services in the heart of the summer travel season. By late afternoon Friday, the worst appeared to be over, though there were still lingering cancellations and delays do to the cascading effect of the disruption.
American Express said it temporarily had some difficulties processing transactions, while TD Bank responded to online complaints by saying it was working to restore customers’ ability to access their accounts.
Elsewhere, people experienced minor inconveniences, including trouble ordering ahead at Starbucks, causing long lines to form at some of the coffee chain’s stores.
In New York City’s Times Square, right before 12:30 a.m., the blue “recovery” screens popping up on laptops appeared on several giant electronic billboards. A few were dark Friday afternoon.
Cyber expert James Bore said real harm would be caused. “All of these systems are running the same software,” Bore said. “We’ve made all of these tools so widespread that when things inevitably go wrong — and they will, as we’ve seen — they go wrong at a huge scale.”
Ann Johnson, corporate vice president and deputy chief information security officer at Microsoft, said late Friday afternoon that “at this point in time, I would say that customers are receiving or have received the necessary information they need and are getting the support they need — understanding it’s a very major issue.”
Cybersecurity experts said those affected by the outage also needed to be wary of bad actors reaching out claiming they can help. “Attackers will definitely prey on organizations as a result of this,” said Gartner analyst Eric Grenier.