Microsoft users around the world were impacted by an outage on Friday, which disrupted operations at banks and hospitals, kicked media outlets off the air, knocked banks offline, and resulted in thousands of canceled flights.
The outage was linked to CrowdStrike, a U.S. cybersecurity firm that advertises being used by over half of Fortune 500 companies. The firm said one of its recent content updates had a defect that impacted Microsoft's Windows Operating System, and stressed that the incident was "not a security incident or cyberattack."
CrowdStrike's CEO, George Kurtz, apologized for the disruptions in a post on X, noting "the issue has been identified and a fix has been deployed."
Meanwhile, Microsoft said "the underlying cause has been fixed, however, residual impact is continuing to affect some Microsoft 365 apps and services."
Some local agencies were impacted by the outage, including the County of San Joaquin.
Miguel Villapudua, chairman of the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors, said just before 10 a.m. that systems at the county were affected by the outage. He cautioned that it would impact the county's ability to conduct normal business transactions.
However, county offices remained open throughout the day.
"Our staff is working to quickly and diligently address the issue to restore all of the county systems, prioritizing public safety and health to ensure that our law enforcement partners, the hospital, and other health clinics have the necessary tools and systems to do their life-saving work," Villapudua said.
The county's phone systems were not affected, according to the chairman. Residents who needed assistance were encouraged to contact county departments by phone.
"County employees will do all they can to provide a superior level of service despite these challenges," Villapudua said. "We appreciate your patience and understanding as we work to resolve this issue.”
The San Joaquin County Office of Education also reported IT issues.
The agency posted an alert on its Facebook page that said "services provided by SJCOE may be unavailable and responses to emails will be delayed."
Allegiant Airlines canceled a flight into the Stockton Metropolitan Airport around 11 a.m., according to county spokesperson Hilary Crowley.
The airport is referring passengers who have had their flights canceled or delayed to Allegiant's customer service line for help rescheduling flights or flight updates.
At the city of Stockton, operations were running smoothly.
City spokesperson Connie Cochran said the city hasn't fully deployed CrowdStrike so it was not impacted by the outage.
The Stockton Police Department said it experienced a temporary disruption of its California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System (CLETS) in the early morning hours, along with most agencies across the state.
For about two to three hours, the department was unable to confirm restraining orders and protective orders through the CLETA database or run license plate information. Operations have since returned to normal, department officials said.
"We didn't lose any 911 communication. Thankfully the impact was brief and we regained access, and police services were not delayed or negatively impacted," police spokesman David Scott said. "We are thankful for the city's IT department and their efforts to make sure our systems can provide the best service to our officers and staff to protect and serve the community of Stockton."
Record reporter Hannah Workman covers news in Stockton and San Joaquin County. She can be reached at hworkman@recordnet.com or on Twitter @byhannahworkman. Support local news, subscribe to The Stockton Record at https://www.recordnet.com/subscribenow .
This article originally appeared on The Record: CrowdStrike outage impacts San Joaquin County, some local agencies due to IT issues
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