State sees mixed impacts from CrowdStrike outage

BOSTON (SHNS) – While a global technology outage snarled air travel and brought some businesses to a halt Friday morning, the effect on Massachusetts state government was more muted and limited to things like Registry of Motor Vehicles customer service appointments, courtroom operations, and MBTA bus or train arrival time data.

“The Healey-Driscoll Administration is closely monitoring the CrowdStrike technology outage and working to mitigate any impacts on Massachusetts,” a spokesperson for Gov. Maura Healey said Friday morning as what one expert called “the largest IT outage in history” came into better light.

The governor’s office said the Department of Transportation is the only Executive Branch agency that uses CrowdStrike services significantly, though some independent agencies, municipalities and the Trial Court also rely on CrowdStrike to some extent.

The tech outage has not affected Massachusetts’ 911 emergency reporting system though public safety officials are monitoring that function closely, Healey’s office said.

At the RMV, all customer service center appointments scheduled for Friday morning were cancelled “as many workstations at centers are not operational,” and the statewide vehicle inspection system was not available, the Registry said. Road test appointments were still taking place as planned Friday morning.

Because some Massachusetts hospitals were affected by the outage and many chose to cancel elective procedures Friday, the Department of Public Health was working with hospitals to put procedures in place for any downtime so they can continue to provide care, the governor’s office said.

DPH has also activated its Department Operations Center in Marlborough to take any calls from health care providers across the state.

The Massachusetts Port Authority said Friday morning that its systems were not affected by the CrowdStrike issue. But some airlines that fly in and out of Logan International Airport were experiencing computer issues that led to delays, and Massport urged travelers to check with their airline to find out whether their travel might be impacted.

The Massachusetts judiciary experienced “technical issues in some areas of operation” on Friday morning, a spokeswoman said.

“About half of staff workstations were impacted by the outage and are in the process of being restored,” court spokeswoman Jennifer Donahue told the News Service. “In addition, the Trial Court’s transcript recording system, For The Record (FTR) is not operating in a number of courthouses, which is causing a delay in some court sessions. The Trial Court’s case management system and public portals, MassCourts.org, are fully functional.”

The outage did not affect the Massachusetts Legislature, where lawmakers are holding double-barreled Friday formal sessions to get an overdue fiscal year 2025 budget to the governor’s desk.

“We are not aware of any disruptions to IT infrastructure, and continue to monitor the situation closely as it unfolds,” House and Senate spokespeople said in a joint statement to the News Service.

There was no impact on service at the MBTA, but the bus and commuter rail real-time tracking data available to riders was unavailable for part of Friday morning. At around 10 a.m., the governor’s office said MBTA bus prediction and location information was available again.

The cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said the issue involved a defect found in one of its content updates for Windows hosts. The issue thought to be causing the outage is not a security incident or cyberattack, the company said.

“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,” the company said.

(Michael P. Norton contributed reporting)

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WWLP.