Global tech outage: Phoenix area felt impact from botched cybersecurity update

PHOENIX - Impact from a technology outage on July 19 that caused massive disruptions worldwide was also felt in the Phoenix area.

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.

Businesses and governments worldwide experienced hours-long disruptions, and they scrambled to deal with the fallout. CrowdStrike has apologized, but the breadth of the outages highlighted the fragility of a digitized world dependent on just a few providers for key computing services.

Travelers at 2 Phoenix area airports affected

Among the airports affected by the tech outage was Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport in the far East Valley.

"We found out that our flights were canceled," said a woman named Christina.

Christina and her friends were supposed to go back to Appleton, Wisc. earlier on Friday.

"Everything is, like, closed down," said a woman named Lara, who is also traveling to Appleton. "Like, we can’t get online to even book it, and they don’t even have any way to book it, so we're just kine of like screwed."

With the outage, people like Christina were stuck for some time.

"We have no car," said Christina. "We returned it all, so we are going to have to Uber and find a hotel."

"We are in the height of summer travels," said Ryan Smith with Mesa Gateway Airport. "So, for this to happen on a busy Friday, it certainly is not great timing."

Smith said the system started to come back online during the late morning hours, but not before 19 of the 34 total flights scheduled (55%) were canceled.

"For the most part, passengers are taking it in stride, and understand that this is the technical world that we live in," Smith said.

Amid the outage, travelers arrived at the airport with mixed expectations.

"My wife, she was checking the news, we weren’t sure what was going to happen," said a person named Raven, who had plans to travel to Eugene, Ore. "We’re hopeful that we would get on."

 "I mean, it’s a little longer line than we thought, but it’s alright," said Brent, who is going to Sandpoint, Idaho.

At Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix, long lines were seen in Terminal 4, and in within a 24-hour period, the airport had over 160 delays and over two dozen flight cancelations. Southwest flights were not affected.

Some travelers expressed their concerns and worries.

"I'm cooking for an event in Memphis and I'm scared," said one traveler. "I'm scared I'm not gonna make it. I just went up there to talk to them, and they were like 'hey, the system's still down. If it was up, we could rebook you, but it's still down.'"

"Lovely niece of mine and her fiance are getting married tonight in Chicago, so we hope to be there," said another traveler. 

Police, fire, hospitals also affected

Airports were not the only entities affected, as police, fire, and hospital operations were also impacted.

"The medical sector is probably the most concerning," said Ken Colburn with Data Doctors. "911 systems were down, so there’s a lot of mission-critical things got impacted by this. There’s gonna be a lot to learn from this, but unfortunately, it’s an aspect of this interconnected, high-speed, hyperactive tech world that we live in."

Banner shut down many locations as a result of the outage, keeping only its hospitals open for emergencies and inpatient care.

As the outages mostly hit during the overnight hours, it became more difficult to find help to fix the problems. Some turn to older methods, such as using pen, paper, and other technology, to help alleviate the impact in the interim.

"The good thing was that cell phone still continue to work, so crews could plug an address into their phone, and use that mapping to get to a call," said Scott Freitag with Central Arizona Medical and Fire.

"You know, old paper charts, using pens, papers, old ways to write orders and track patients throughout the organization," said Dr. Michael White, Chief Clinical Officer for Valleywise Health. "It was like going back to the 80s."

Rural Metro Fire experiences outage

"Sometime around 10 p.m. last night we did experience som outages in our dispatch center," PIO Shawn Gilleland at Rural Metro Fire said.

For his department and the Chandler Fire Department, back up systems were executed immediately which sent operations back to the old school way.

"Somebody would have had to relay then not only collected by the dispatchers, but then relayed verbally and sometimes obviously multiple times back and forth," Gilleland said.

The list of businesses impacted by the global outage goes on and on but many places had to change communication methods as a result, including the aforementioned 911 dispatch centers and a few voting centers.

Some of the equipment at the voting center had to be swapped out.

The Associated Press (AP) contributed to this report.

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