CrowdStrike outage closes Pueblo County, some state offices due to IT issues

Update: Pueblo County reported Friday afternoon that IT staff will work during the weekend to fix the issues and Pueblo County government is expected to reopen Monday.

Pueblo County and many state offices were closed July 19 due to a major technology outage that put most services in cyber limbo.

Pueblo County government was completely closed "due to multiple IT issues impacting our system," county spokesperson Anthony Mestas said.

A news release issued by the county just before 11 a.m. stated that both city and county government, as well as the Colorado State Patrol, "experienced effects of the CrowdStrike software update that affected computer operations worldwide," and that county computer operations were being restored by Friday morning.

"Like what was experienced globally, nearly all aspects of government services were affected by the outage," county officials stated in the release. "Pueblo County’s redundancy plan worked flawlessly, and the Emergency Operations Center was activated in response to the incident."

“As a result of the redundancy plan, the Pueblo County Sheriff’s Office’s communication center continued to operate with no issues and our deputies responded to calls throughout the night,” Pueblo County Sheriff David Lucero said in the release. “I want to emphasize that although systems were impacted, this did not affect operations of emergency services in Pueblo County.”

Lucero maintained contact with Pueblo Mayor Heather Graham and ensured public safety was not impacted, according to the release.

The city's communication center went down at approximately 12:30 a.m. but operations were diverted to the PCSO Communication Center, which was able to route all 911 calls back to the city communications center to dispatch responders to calls.

"This assistance was provided to both Pueblo Fire Department and Pueblo Police Department for their emergency calls to maintain efficiency and communication for residents seeking services," according to the release.

The PCSO took 78 emergency 911 calls from the city. By 8:15 a.m., service was restored to the PCSO and city communications centers.

According to the release, the county has a total of 2,500 computers and as of 9:30 a.m., 200 had been restored.

Pueblo County Commission Chairman Eppie Griego said "it’s all hands on deck from the county information technology department."

The global problem did not affect every computer, but enough for the BOCC to close county buildings Friday. The PCSO and 10th Judicial District Attorney’s Office remained open.

“Pueblo County Government IT department staff are rebooting computers in county buildings manually by deleting a CrowdStrike software update file that was corrupted overnight,” Griego said. “It is a tedious process, unfortunately. Each computer is different. Some take up to 10 minutes to fix and others are taking less.”

The restoration project was expected to continue throughout the day on Friday.

“We apologize to the public for the inconvenience of having to close our offices today,” Griego said.

The Pueblo Department of Public Health and Environment stated Friday morning it too would be closing that day at noon, with all services and the office itself set to reopen to the public on Monday, July 22, at 8 a.m.

"Many of our services are being impacted by IT issues this morning. If you have an appointment with the Clinic, Vital Records, or WIC, please call before your appointment to confirm it is available," PDPHE officials said.

The most significant impacts to the Colorado State Patrol were with its Computer Aided Dispatching system, CSP officials said in a news release.

"Emergency services are not being interrupted. Agency radios and phones are fully operational. The Colorado State Patrol has created manual workarounds to administrative processes to capture the current workload while CAD is unavailable," according to the release.

The Colorado Division of Motor Vehicles also experienced outages that affected most services, according to a statement from Jennifer Giambi, communications manager for the state motor vehicle office. "Impacted services include, online DMV services including DMV Express Kiosks, driver license and ID card services at state and county driver license offices, county motor vehicle offices and DMV call centers," Giambi said.

She indicated there is currently no timeline for when services will be restored. The state DMV will provide updates via its social media pages and on DMV.Colorado.gov/locations .

CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. is an American cybersecurity technology company based in Austin, Texas. It provides cloud workload protection and endpoint security, threat intelligence, and cyberattack response services.

In a statement issued shortly before 6 a.m. Eastern time, the company reported, "CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted.

"This was not a cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed. We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website," according to the statement.

More on the outages from USA Today: Global Microsoft CrowdStrike outage makes issues from the grocery store to the hospital

Chieftain reporter Tracy Harmon covers business news. She can be reached by email at tharmon@chieftain.com or via X , formerly Twitter, at twitter.com/tracywumps . Support local news, subscribe to The Pueblo Chieftain at subscribe.chieftain.com .

This article originally appeared on The Pueblo Chieftain: CrowdStrike outage closes Pueblo County, some state offices due to IT issues