LOYAL. LOCAL. COMPLETE.
A faulty security update resulted in what NBC News called “arguably the largest global information technology outage in history” on Friday, July 19. The outage affected law enforcement agencies, airports, banks and a myriad of other businesses across the globe, causing confusion, panic and frustration.
The outage occurred after CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm, pushed out a defective update that debilitated Windows computers using the software. CrowdStrike is used by businesses and institutions worldwide to protect data – the number of services affected by the update was astronomical.
A subsequent update was released to remedy the error. Some Windows machines were able to download the update and reboot automatically, while others required a more intensive reboot process.
In Edgar County, reports of outages among local businesses began to appear on social media Friday morning. A Facebook post from First Mid Bank and Trust revealed that “online and mobile banking services are experiencing intermittent disruption.”
First Neighbor Bank experienced an outage Friday morning for “a good couple of hours.” Computers and online services were spotty, if they were functional at all, until the afternoon.
“We’re pretty much back to normal now,” Lauren Swinford, a First Neighbor Bank teller, explained.
The Circle K gas station located at 300 S Main Street lost the use of its ATM and card machine from approximately 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. Friday. Card services returned briefly, but store staff still encouraged customers to bring cash in case subsequent outages occurred.
“We are able to take card (payments) for now,” said cashier Sidnie Cabrera.
Other businesses were not as fortunate. The Paris Starbucks’ mobile order and ticket printing services were still out of commission late Friday afternoon, as were some of the store’s cash registers.
“As soon as Starbucks opened, it was down,” shift supervisor Jordan Tucker explained.
While law enforcement agencies nationwide were taken offline, the Paris Police Department was fortunate to dodge the bullet when it came to Friday’s outage.
At this time, it is unclear how long the outage will persist for affected businesses. A statement published by CrowdStrike Friday afternoon indicates the company is working to address the issue.
“We quickly identified the issue and deployed a fix, allowing us to focus diligently on restoring customer systems as our highest priority,” George Kurtz, CrowdStrike CEO, explained in the release.
“Nothing is more important to me than the trust and confidence that our customers and partners have put into CrowdStrike. As we resolve this incident, you have my commitment to provide full transparency on how this occurred and steps we’re taking to prevent anything like this from happening again,” Kutz concluded.