Global IT outage has widespread impacts on city and state agencies in the Triangle

RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) — City and state agencies are working to get up and running after experiencing a range of interruptions with their services due to the global IT outage.

The NCDMV said all of its driver licenses offices are back open after being impacted by the outage. Most plate agencies, which are privately run and managed by the DMV will remain closed until Monday. A spokesperson said the DMV will try to contact people who had appointments this morning to reschedule.

Hundreds of NCDOT traffic cameras in the Triangle went dark. NCDOT and law enforcement use the cameras to monitor traffic and crashes. In the late afternoon, NCDOT said it is working on a fix for the cameras and it hopes they will be operating shortly.

Phone systems at most state facilities went down, according to a spokesperson for the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.

The City of Raleigh’s online permit portal went down. It’s back up and running, but the city said scheduled inspections may still be impacted over the next week due to the prolonged nature of the outage.

The Wake County Emergency Operations Center went to a level 3 to coordinate the response to the outage. The outage did impact county computers. A spokesperson said the county established restoration stations across the county where staff could bring their laptops to be fixed.

The spokesperson said Wake County emergency services did not experience delays.

The President of Managed IT Solutions Rob Downs said the widespread impacts show how interconnected our systems are.

“We’ve not seen one like this that affects this many people across the world,” Downs said.

He said the work that goes into fixing it varies depending on the size of the business or agency and where they’re running CrowdStrike.

The North Carolina Department of Information Technology said it’s working closely with state agencies to fix the problem, sharing the following statement with CBS 17:

“As you know, the worldwide outage related to Microsoft Windows systems and CrowdStrike is impacting state agencies in North Carolina and their services, just as it is impacting private sector and other organizations around the globe. The impact varies by agency and service.

We are informed that the issue stems from a vendor software bug and is not related to a cybersecurity incident.

The vendor is providing its customers steps to correct the issue and NCDIT is going through those steps as they are provided. NCDIT is working closely with state agencies as we all navigate this issue.”

Downs said there’s a whole other problem stemming from this outage. He warns scammers are calling people posing as CrowdStrike or IT departments. He wants people to know CrowdStrike is not calling anyone and if someone’s posing as IT to get onto your computer that means your computer is working and therefore not running CrowdStrike.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to CBS17.com.