New York Counties Face CrowdStrike’s Global Tech Outage

The CrowdStrike outage is causing problems that are expected to continue throughout the weekend and possibly beyond for many individuals, organizations and municipalities.

“This is going to be a complicated day and a long day for a lot of people around the world, around the country and here at home, so obviously we ask the public to be patient with us as we work through this issue,” Monroe County Executive Adam Bello said at a news conference Friday morning.

County leaders across New York State are scrambling to get a handle on the massive computer system outage. In Monroe County, they have gathered at the emergency operations center to team up and inform the public.

“We had the opportunity to participate in a conference call initiated by the New York State Department of Homeland Security and a representative from CrowdStrike as well,” Bello said.

The early morning call came after a global software update from CrowdStrike caused thousands of computers across the state to crash on a Windows platform, triggering a series of problems in nearly every department in every county.

In Monroe County, emergency communications and nearly all county operations were impacted.

Counties are now following CrowdStrike’s guidance to resolve the issue.

“The county is working on two solutions to address this issue,” Bello said. “There’s an automated solution that’s already underway. We were able to start working on that very early this morning. But unfortunately, it’s a very long and tedious process, and just using that automated solution could take several days to reach all of our devices. So the other solution is a manual solution, which requires county IT staff to go to each of those individual devices and do the repair.”

Counties across the state are working together in this and similar crises.

“From an IT perspective, there are a number of user groups and discussion groups that the county IT directors share, and we call it the back channel and a lot of the back channel communication, almost immediately, as the situation occurs and the situation evolves, that information is shared widely,” said Daniel Krebs, Monroe County’s chief information officer. “We use that to help support a statewide cybersecurity, which Monroe County is involved in. So by informing all the other counties and particularly some of the other counties around us, we were able to provide best practices to address it relatively quickly.”

The county, like others, mobilized IT operations to prioritize repairs, focusing on the Monroe County 911 Operations Center.

“Our priority is always public safety and health,” Bello said. “The 911 center is operational, however. It is operational and residents should continue to call 911 in the event of an emergency. If you call 911 and the call is not answered immediately, please do not hang up.”

The governor’s office says New Yorkers in all 62 counties can currently call 911.

But many organizations and businesses are closed or affected by the outage, including airlines.

“As we get closer to our departure time, the anxiety increases, but I think most people are generally doing well,” said Timothy Skerjanec of Syracuse Hancock International Airport.

“I got a message on my phone saying he’s leaving in an hour, but we’ll see,” Sheree Vora said from the airport.

It looks like it may take several days before the issue is completely resolved.

The outage is also affecting U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, with CBP saying it is experiencing processing delays at ports of entry in western New York state.

“While ensuring national and homeland security, we are working to mitigate impacts to our operations and are proactively working with our stakeholders to minimize the impact on international trade and travel,” CBP said in a statement. “During this time, travelers at air and land ports of entry may experience longer than normal wait times. All CBP applications, including Automated Commercial Environment, CBP One, Simplified Arrival, and the Global Entry mobile app, are operational. We will continue our work to restore our systems to full capacity and provide updates as they become available.”

“I just want people to be assured that the team that supports us is working on this issue to ensure that the health and safety of the community is at the forefront and that we are working to resolve this issue,” Bello said.