‘This is not a drill’: How quick action, pre-planning, averted catastrophe during IT outage

HONOLULU (KHON2) — It has been more than 24 hours since a faulty software update wreaked havoc around the world, grounding flights, disrupting hospitals, businesses and first responders. Some companies are still playing catch up.

The impact of the CrowdStrike software update at the heart of the IT meltdown, hit Hawaii around 7 p.m. on Thursday.

Many officials said the damage was minimal and systems are back up, but some emergency officials said it was no joke and it did put people’s lives at risk.

American Medical Response operates emergency medical services across the state. On Thursday around 7 p.m. their entire system went down, according to Hawaii’s AMR Regional Director Speedy Bailey.

“It’s a very serious system,” Bailey said. “This is not a drill. This was live fire. So we had planes in the air, we had ambulances on the ground with patients…hospitals could not contact us.”

Bailey said they had to input information manually, with a pen and paper and used cell phones to communicate.

“Then we worked as quickly as we could to get our backup systems and our computers back up, not to be on the same network, but to be on a separate network, so that we could maintain key computer links to flight follow, if you will, to track our aircraft,” he explained.

He said he is proud of how his team responded. They were able to handle the situation because they had a backup plan.

“This is a wakeup call for everybody, because it could have been so much worse,” Bailey said. “And so, prepare, plan and look for those redundant systems, you know, especially in communications.”

Derek Gabriel, cyber expert and CEO of Ignite Solutions Group, said creating a backup plan is not sexy, fun or cheap, but its invaluable in situations like this.

“I tell executives and business owners sit down for 15 minutes in your next executive meeting on Monday and ask your folks, you know, ‘Hey, what happens if we don’t have access to this key piece of equipment or this key piece of data? How will we respond?’ And that’s the easiest way to start planning,” Gabriel said.

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In the aftermath of the outage, he warns bad actors are already taking advantage of the confusion and chaos.

“That’s where we see the cyber-attacks come through as phishing,” he added. “We saw some starting today. [We] got some questions from folks where they said, ‘Hey your cyber security is got a problem, click here to find out more.'”

Gabriel said being vigilant is key.