New York counties coping with Crowdstrike global tech outage

The Crowdstrike outage is causing problems that are expected to continue through the weekend and possibly beyond for many people, organizations and municipalities.

“It’s 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’re asking the public to be patient with us as we work to resolve this,” Monroe County Executive Adam Bello said during a Friday morning news conference.

Leaders from counties across New York state are working to get a handle on the massive computer system crash. In Monroe County, they gathered at the Emergency Operations Center to team up and brief the public.

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

The early morning call came after a global software update by Crowdstrike caused thousands of computers across the state on a Windows platform to crash, setting off a tailspin of problems in nearly every department in every county.

In Monroe County, emergency communications and almost all county operations were hit.

Counties are now following the directions of Crowdstrike for the fix.

“The county is working on two fixes to fix this issue,” Bello said. “Already underway is an automated fix. We were able to start this very early this morning. But unfortunately, that is a very long process and a drawn-out process and just utilizing that automatic fix could take several days to get to all of our devices. So, the other fix is a manual fix, which requires county IT personnel to get to attend to each one of those individual devices and perform that fix.”

Counties across the state work together in this and similar crisis.

“From the IT perspective, there’s a number of user groups and focus groups that county IT directors share, and we call it back channel and a lot of back channel communications, almost immediately, as the situation happens so soon as the situation evolves, that information is shared widely,” said Daniel Krebs, Monroe County chief information technology officer. “We use that to help support a whole-of-state cybersecurity, which Monroe County is involved in. So, by notifying all the other counties and especially some of the other counties surrounding us, we were able to provide some best practices on remediating it relatively quickly.”

The county, like others, has mobilized IT operations to make repairs in priority order, focusing on the 911 Operations Center in Monroe County.

“Our priority is always with public safety and public health first,” said Bello. “The 911 Center is operational though. It is operational and residents should continue to call 911 for emergencies and if you call 911 and the call is not answered immediately, please do not hang up.”

The governor’s office says that New Yorkers in all 62 counties are able to call 911 at this time.

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

“As our departure times approach, anxiety is increasing, but I think most people are generally OK,” said Timothy Skerjanec, from Syracuse Hancock International Airport.

“I did get something on my phone saying it’ll leave in another hour but we’ll see,” said Sheree Vora, from the airport.

Word is, it could be days before the problem is fully solved.

The outage is also affecting U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, with CBP saying they’re experiencing processing delays at ports of entry in Western New York.

“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 to international trade and travel, CBP said in part 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 folks to be assured that this team behind us is working on this issue to ensure that particularly the health and safety of the community is at the forefront of this and that we’re working to address this issue,” said Bello.