Global technology outage impacts parts of Columbus and Chattahoochee Valley

COLUMBUS, Ga. ( WRBL ) — A global technology outage is also having an impact in the Chattahoochee Valley on Friday morning.

Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike says this outage is not the result of a security incident or cyberattack, according to the Associated Press.

Here’s what we know now as WRBL’s reporting continues.

St. Francis-Emory Healthcare says the global outage has left the hospital in “downtime procedures,” meaning network access is limited but services are still available.

However, over at Piedmont Columbus Regional , a spokesperson reports the hospital has not been impacted by the global cyber outage.

“We are good across the Piedmont System,” said spokesman J.T. Fellows. “We are additionally monitoring our vendors for potential issues.”

Piedmont has 25 hospitals across Georgia, including Columbus.

CSU reports it does not use CrowdStrike and everything on campus has been operational, according to CSU Vice President of External Affairs John Lester. The IT team has not heard of any issues on campus.

Columbus Consolidated Government released a statement saying the city itself is not experiencing any issues, but some of its vendors are. The city provided this list:

• Finance, Inspections, Engineering, and Planning
• Viewing of Public Tax Records
• Fire Department and Finance Revenue
• Tax Commissioner/Tag Office

Update: The city says everything they’re aware of has been restored except for the tag renewal system.

WRBL reached out to Columbus Fire & EMS, who say the issue has since been corrected and there was no impact to public safety during the outage.

The other city departments are waiting on a fix from the vendors.

Columbus-based supplemental insurance company Aflac has been impacted by the cyber outage, according to a spokesman. The company says their technology and security teams are working on it. They do expect to return to normal operations by the end of the day.

Update: As of 4 p.m., Aflac says all core business operations are back to normal. Business is being conducted as usual.

Aflac gave this statement on the outage:

“In the early hours this morning we became aware of the global Microsoft and CrowdStrike outage impacting various applications. To ensure that our customers continue to receive the services they expect from us, Aflac’s Technology and Global Security teams are working actively and taking measures to mitigate any potential impact in both the US and Japan. We appreciate the patience of our stakeholders as this global outage, which appears to be the result of an upgrade to CrowdStrike, is remedied. We expect a return to full business operations by end of day.”
— Aflac

Aflac does business in the United States as well as Japan.

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