Oregon, Eugene area affected by tech outage

Eugene-area agencies and businesses felt the impact Friday of a global tech outage that impacted major companies worldwide.

The outage, which began late Thursday night, affected airlines, banks, government offices and other operations, causing system outages that sometimes took hours to address.

Reportedly, the outage was linked to Crowdstrike, a cybersecurity firm that claims to be used by 298 of the Fortune 500 companies. Its website also states it is used by six of the top 10 health care providers.

The company reported that one of its recent content updates had a defect that impacted Microsoft's Windows Operating System, adding the incident was "not a security incident or cyberattack."

The company's CEO, George Kurtz, apologized for the disruptions in a post on X, noting the issue has been identified and isolated and a fix has been deployed. CrowdStrike is "working with all impacted customers to ensure that systems are back up and they can deliver the services their customers are counting on."

Meanwhile, Microsoft said "the underlying cause has been fixed" and impacted Microsoft 365 apps and services were recovered, though the company continues to monitor the issue.

Eugene/Springfield hospitals affected

Eugene area hospitals were affected late Thursday night.

PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend in Springfield, one of Oregon's busiest hospitals, canceled all elective surgeries Friday although managers said emergency surgeries would continue as needed.

"PeaceHealth, along with organizations worldwide, has been impacted by the CrowdStrike outage," PeaceHealth stated via email. "We are assessing the impact on our hospitals, clinics and facilities. We continue to make progress to restore our systems to full functionality.

"PeaceHealth actively prepares for contingencies and is able to maintain critical patient care and access. We recognize the important role we serve in our communities and prioritize our ability to meet that need."

One EUG flight canceled, several delayed

Eugene Airport Director Cathryn Stephens told the Register-Guard that one flight was canceled. According to monitors in the airport, this was Allegiant flight 3821, Eugene to Austin at 10:48 a.m.

Several flights were delayed. Stephens described most of the delays as "not extreme" but there were exceptions. The longest delay is Delta flight 3708 from Eugene to Salt Lake City, which was scheduled to depart at 6 a.m. but was delayed to 1 p.m.

The airport appeared to have avoided the types of impacts seen elsewhere. Across the U.S., thousands of flights were canceled Friday morning. American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines were among those who grounded flights less than an hour after Microsoft said it resolved a cloud-services-related outage that impacted several low-cost carriers.

Eugene Springfield 9-1-1 Dispatch 'prepared for situations like this'

911 dispatchers and call takers in Eugene and Springfield used backup plans to keep services running.

“If there is one thing we have, it is contingency plans,” said Janel Klews, spokesperson for the Eugene Springfield Fire Department in a statement. “Technology makes us more efficient, but we have a responsibility to our community to be fully functional even without it.”

According to Klews, the Department works closely with Central Lane 9-1-1 to keep paper-based backup systems and information available for tracking calls and units in the field to continue service as smoothly as possible.

Just like staff did before computers were made a part of their system, units carry map books and notepads so that crew captains or medic staff members not driving can take notes on call details.

“There is never a condition in which we are able to stop because a system goes offline,” Klews said. “If radios go down, we use landline or cell phones. If computers go down, dispatch uses paper medical protocols, maps, and call cards.”

Eugene Police Department Capt. Roy Wright said all emergency services were back up and operational as of 5 a.m. Friday.

Officers responded to priority calls for service with a pen and pad in hand and were aided by Google Maps while their network was not operational.

Portland issues emergency declaration

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler issued an emergency declaration Friday over the tech outage, with a statement noting the outages are affecting city servers, employee computers and emergency communications.

Meanwhile, the Maryland Department of Emergency Management increased its state activation level from "normal" to "partial," citing the tech outage. A post on X says a "partial" activation is for incidents that require "significant monitoring or resources," with additional emergency operations staffing from other agencies, functions and supporting organizations.

What is CrowdStrike?

CrowdStrike is a popular cybersecurity software company created in 2012 by CEO George Kurtz, along with Dmitri Alperovitch and Gregg Marston.

According to its website, CrowdStrike has the "world's most advanced cloud-native platform that protects and enables the people, processes and technologies that drive modern enterprise."

Alperovitch, CrowdStrike's former Chief Technology Officer, is a member of the Biden administration's Homeland Security Advisory Council, which is meant to provide advice and expertise to support decision-making "across the spectrum of homeland security operations."

What caused the CrowdStrike outage?

According to an alert sent by CrowdStrike to its clients and reviewed by Reuters, the company's "Falcon Sensor" software caused Microsoft Windows to crash and display a blue screen, known informally as the "Blue Screen of Death."

Kurtz said "there was an issue with a Falcon content update for Windows Hosts" but customers “remain fully protected,” according to Kurtz's post on X.

Impact on the economy

The outage isn’t expected to have any effect on the broader economy unless it persists for days.

“At this point, the IT outage is more a nuisance than an economic event,” says Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics. “If it drags on into early next week, the economic damage will begin to mount.”

If the outage is limited to a day or two, canceled flights can be rebooked and banking transactions can be completed later.

“There is plenty of time for activity to be recovered over the remainder of the month,” says Jonathan Miller, senior U.S. economist at Barclays.

Register-Guard reporters Miranda Cyr, Haleigh Kochanski and Alan Torres and USA TODAY contributed to this article.

This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: Eugene impacts of Crowdstrike outage on Microsoft systems