Friday July 19, 2024 | VICTORIA, BC [Last update 3 pm PDT]
by Mary P Brooke | Island Social Trends
Starting last night and into day, there has been a worldwide tech outage that is disrupting a wide range of societal and business services that rely on computer systems that use a particular aspect of Microsoft 365 apps and services.
The impact includes the operations of hospitals, airlines, banks and other service-related industries.
Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has stated an apology and has assured clients that the issue is not a cyberattack. The problem had to do with a Falcon content update for Windows Hosts.
CrowdStrike is an American cybersecurity technology company based in Austin, Texas. It provides cloud workload protection and endpoint security, threat intelligence, and cyberattack response services.
And strike the crowd (society and economic) it did, on Thursday evening July 18 — around the time Republican nominee Donald Trump was making his long acceptance speech, it could be noted.
The global tech outage has been disrupting operations in multiple industries on Friday, with airlines halting flights, some broadcasters off-air and a range of everyday services like banking and health care hit by system problems.
Banks are posting messages like: “TD has been impacted by an outage disrupting organizations around the world. We apologize that wait times are longer than usual.” This has made web-banking unavailable in some cases as well as use of ATMs.
Impact in BC:
In BC, Premier David Eby says the computer outage didn’t impact emergency response in BC — the call centre for emergency response (911) was impacted but remained operational.
In some hospitals there was disruption of dietary orders, lab work, scheduling which necessitated an immediate transition to paper-based models and then that information had to go back into the system, explained Health Minister Adrian Dix today. “That can be a fair bit of work,” said Premier Eby in a media session today.
Of note, two of the major hospitals in Victoria have been transitioning to having full electronic record-keeping capacity (Royal Jubilee Hospital in June and Victoria General Hospital coming up in September). It would appear that having an on-paper backup system is worthwhile.
In a news release later this afternoon, Health Minister Adrian Dix says that BC was made aware of the global system disruption last night (July 18) as affecting many health-authority-owned facilities, including hospitals. He reiterated from his earlier comments in the media sessions that emergency services including 911 and ambulances have not been impacted.
“Our primary concern is the continuity and quality of patient care. We have implemented contingency plans to ensure that our health-care services remain operational and that patient care is not disrupted to the best of our ability,” said Dix in his statement.
Staff at the Provincial Health Services Authority remain in contact with CrowdStrike,” said Dix.
He noted that health-care workers and others worked on the disruption overnight including an initial group of IT staff who were deployed in the early hours this morning (Friday July 19, 2024).
Some staffing systems may be impacted, Dix said, apologizing in advance for any inconvenience caused by unplanned service interruptions that may occur.
CrowdStrike and MS Windows:
According to an alert sent by global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike to its clients and reviewed by Reuters, the company’s Falcon Sensor software is causing Microsoft Windows to crash and display a blue screen, known informally as the “blue screen of death.”
The problem crashed Windows machines and servers, sending them into a loop of recovery so that they couldn’t restart.
Falcon Sensor software is a tool in the CrowdStrike Falcon security operations center (SOC) platform used to detect viruses and any other cyberthreats on a system.
Real-world impact:
“CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts,” company CEO George Kurtz said in social media. “Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”
The business world that runs offices and interfaces with the public through services generally-speaking long ago chose the Microsoft lane. Mac is used more in the graphics-based industries. Linux is a server-side realm.
The issue affected Microsoft 365 apps and services. The website Downdetector, which tracks user-reported internet outages, recorded growing outages in services at Visa, ADT security and Amazon, as well as airlines.
Microsoft said on Friday that the underlying cause for outage of its 365 apps and services has been fixed, but the residual impact of cybersecurity outages are continuing to affect some customers.
Almost every office, business or service that runs computers is vulnerable to the challenges of maintaining software and the secure operation of that software. Confidence in having to rely on a major software system may be shaken due to this incident, and reminds businesses and governments to include redundancy and alternative systems in their IT plans.
Sector concentration and monopoly is a problem.
- There was a country-wide disruption and failure of Rogers wireless services in July 2022, and yet in Canada we now see only three companies to choose from (Rogers, Bell and TELUS).
- The Interac banking system became dysfunctional in June 2023 which interrupted many things from first-of-month rent and bill payments to everyday family and business banking.
Consumers and business may wish to review how dependent they’ve become on apps and all-thing-electronic.
===== RELATED:
- Island Health digital transition at two major hospitals this summer (May 28, 2024)
- Interac interruption on first-of-the-month (June 3, 2023)
- Rogers cell and Internet service down across Canada (July 8, 2022)
NEWS SECTIONS: BUSINESS & ECONOMY | DIGITAL TECH