Here’s how the global tech outage impacted many of the vital systems across the mid-Atlantic region

The routine software update deployed by Austin, Texas-based cybersecurity giant Crowdstrike caused computers running Windows operating systems to malfunction, according to the company.

“This is not a security incident or cyberattack,” Crowdstrike said. “The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”

As of Friday morning, systems related to Windows and Microsoft products have started to come back online, but daily operations may still be impacted. For example, air travel will likely see delays after the incident caused the Federal Aviation Administration to ground all flights and several health care systems across the country have reported disruptions.

Crowdstrike CEO George Kurtz provided a statement via a company press representative that pointed people to Crowdstrike’s statement page, as well as his own posts on LinkedIn and X, for updates on the situation. 

“As noted earlier, the issue has been identified and a fix has been deployed,” he said in the statement, which was also posted to his aforementioned social media accounts. “There was an issue with a Falcon content update for Windows Hosts.”  

Here’s how it could affect your day in DC, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia.  

Various government agencies across the mid-Atlantic did not immediately return Technical.ly’s request for comment on the impact of the outage.

DC 

DC’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer 

In a statement to Technical.ly, DC OCTO’s public information officer Laura-Céline Patrick said that despite “some impacts” on the region, critical systems are operational. The OCTO is offering support to impacted agencies.

“District operations are not experiencing major impacts,” the DC agency previously posted at 6:45 a.m. that

“Critical systems are operational,” it added in a subsequent post.

DC Government 

City employees were told to report to work on Friday, the Department of Human Resources posted. 

DC DMV

Online and mobile services are running as normal. Adjudication offices are open and virtual hearings are happening, according to a post by the DMV.

Some services need to be restored, according to the post, but it’s unclear which services. Weekend service will remain the same as well.

DC’s 311/911 call centers

Both 311 and 911 are functioning as normal, according to the Office of Unified Communications. 

WMATA services

The transit system’s call center and website are working after operations went down for a few hours. Metro trains and buses have been running as scheduled, according to a post on X.

Metro Transit Police were reachable by phone or text during the outage. 

District Direct and employment services

DC’s benefits portal, which houses public benefits applications and management, is accessible, according to public information officer Melvin Robinson. All other systems are also running as normal.

DC Police Department

DC Police has experienced no outages to its “mission critical” systems, per a post on X. 

DC Department of Public Works

Trash and recycling will still be picked up today, but programming out of the Solid Waste Education and Enforcement Program is paused. 

Federal agencies

The Social Security Administration closed all its field offices, but its phone line remains open. 

People struggled to contact the Department of Education on Friday morning, but phone lines and the website are now operating normally. 

The Department of Homeland Security announced that it, in tandem with its subagency the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, is working to “fully assess and address system outages,” but it’s unclear what those are. Technical.ly has reached out to the agency for comment. 

CISA also reported “threat actors” using the chaos to stage phishing and related predatory or harmful activity.

Maryland

State of Maryland

Governor Wes Moore said in a statement that his office was monitoring developments across the state’s agencies, as well as local governments, nonprofits, hospital networks, the airports and beyond. Other than the potential individual airlines’ decisions impacting passengers, Gov. Moore did not report any specific systems being down. 

“Our 9-1-1 networks and first responder systems have remained resilient, and we continue to monitor all systems to ensure they are running at full capacity,” he said. “And after conducting a full review of all state systems, I am confident we know the issues that need our attention, and we will work continually until all systems are back to normal operations.”

Maryland Department of Emergency Management

The Maryland Department of Emergency Management has bumped its activation level from “normal” to “partial” as the outage affects various statewide operations. 

We have activated the State Emergency Operations Center in response to the statewide Microsoft Outage.

MDEM has increased the State Activation Level (SAL) from NORMAL to PARTIAL effective at 8:00 a.m. today, Friday July 19, 2024. pic.twitter.com/bwW6B38Ikh

— Maryland Department of Emergency Management (MDEM) (@MDMEMA) July 19, 2024

Maryland courts 

All Maryland courts are closed and clerks’ offices are closed, according to the Montgomery County government. 

BWI Marshall Airport 

The major regional airline hub has announced that the outage’s impact on airlines might impact individual flights and encouraged passengers to confirm their flight status before arrival.

At least 11 and 89 flights have been canceled and delayed, respectively, according to WJZ.

Maryland Transportation Authority and E-Z Pass 

The state’s transportation authority said that E-Z pass customer service centers might be experiencing complications affecting drivers’ wait times. 

Maryland Department of Health

The Maryland Department of Health, contractors, and health care partners experienced
technical issues related to the incident, according to the governor’s office. As of 4 p.m., the outages still affected facilities like the Division of Vital Records and local vital records
offices.

Health and hospital systems 

The Baltimore Banner reported that the University of Maryland Medical System is assessing the outage’s effects. Constituent organizations put downtime procedures — processes to work around less access to electronic records — in place. A

Greater Baltimore Medical Center spokesperson said it also implemented a downtime protocol. 

LifeBridge Health, Sinai Hospital, Northwest Hospital and Carroll Hospital all opened their central command centers to manage the outage, according to the Baltimore Banner.  

Prince George’s County

Prince George’s County Police

The department has seen no reported outages or issues, according to a spokesperson. 

Baltimore

Baltimore City Office of Information and Technology 

Leyla Layman, a chief of staff for the city’s IT office told Technical.ly that the municipal government does not use any CrowdStrike software directly related to the outage. She added that no systems owned by the city were affected by the Friday developments. 

Virginia

State of Virginia 

Gov. Glenn Youngkin wrote in a statement that his office is working with local, regional and federal leaders to remedy disruptions caused by the previous outage. 

“As a result of the administrative disturbances, Virginians may experience delays and we ask everyone to remain patient as we work to remedy and reestablish the high standards that Virginians deserve,” he wrote. 

In a later statement, he noted that there have been reported phishing incidents concurrent with the outage. 

Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles

After being closed a majority of the day, all of the DMV locations in Virginia reopened around 3:20 p.m. Users can also make payments online.

Virginia Employment Commission

The website of the agency that provides unemployment benefits was experiencing a systemwide outage, according to a post on X. This means issues with the call center and online services. 

A public information officer (PIO) previously said that some benefit payments may be delayed. But, they added that most payments were not scheduled to be issued on Friday. A PIO later clarified that its systems were up and running as of Saturday morning. 

Virginia emergency services

According to a statement by Gov. Youngkin, safety systems like 911 systems and “transportation infrastructure” are working as normal. 

Virginia Railway Express

The transit system did not post any service alerts on Friday, but a couple of delays were noted on the site. 

Dulles International Airport

After several groundings related to the outage, flights are beginning to take off at Dulles, according to FlightAware. There are still delays, but the average wait time is decreasing. 

Fairfax County Government

The county posted that there is no “significant impact” on the systems it uses. The police department is also operating as normal. 

Arlington, Virginia

Arlington County Police

All police services are operational in Arlington County, according to communications manager Ashley Savage. 

Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport

Flights are resuming at DCA after residual delays Friday morning, according to FlightAware. As of 11 a.m., the average departure delay is about 35 minutes. 

Delaware

State of Delaware

Public safety services are operating normally, according to a tweet from Gov. Carney. Other services may experience delays.

Delaware courts

All Delaware courts are open and operational, though some computers are impacted.

Delaware Department of Technology and Information

The state’s IT office said it was responding to the outage’s unspecified impacts on its own systems. It is working to restore service, according to its most recent update.

Delaware Division of Motor Vehicles

Locations are closed and phones are down. As of 4 p.m., an alert on the agency’s website said it was still down. 

DART and the Department Of Transportation

Services are operating, but some delays should be expected. The website and app are working.

Delaware Health and Social Services

Delaware Health and Social Services offices are open with possible delays to be expected. 

Delmarva Power

Online services, including billing and outage maps, are working.

Delaware Department of Labor

The agency said that some services are limited, and the alert remained on its website as of 4:30 p.m. It has not provided a comment to Technical.ly’s request for details.

WSFS Bank

Offices are open for business. Online and mobile banking services are available.

Wilmington, Delaware

Wilmington airport and Avelo Airlines

Wilmington was not seriously impacted, an Avelo public relations representative told Technical.ly. As of 10:30 a.m., flights are on time and online and services are available. 

City of Wilmington

Website and online payments are up and running. “We are good in Wilmington,” said John Rago, deputy chief of staff for Mayor Mike Purzycki.

Port of Wilmington 

NC Ports’ systems are experiencing issues due to the outages, the organization said. It anticipates some delays in servicing trucks this morning.

Pennsylvania

Commonwealth government services 

The outage impacted “some Commonwealth systems and agency business operations,” according to a statement from Governor Josh Shapiro on X. 

“All services have been restored and there is no indication that a security incident or cyberattack has occurred,” a spokesperson told Technical.ly on Friday afternoon.

It will be posting additional updates to PA.gov.

Pennsylvania State Police 

Web browsers were back up as of 10 a.m., and “all of our important mechanisms for troopers to do their jobs are functioning,” a spokesperson told Technical.ly.

Health care services 

Several medical systems across the state have been impacted by the outage. UPMC, Wellspan Health and Penn Medicine affiliates told WGAL that their systems had experienced difficulties, but it did not impact patient care. 

Penn Medicine and Main Line Health canceled elective surgeries today, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. Independence Health System and Allegheny Health Network both said they were not impacted by the outage.

Pennsylvania Lottery

Services are back online, but the lottery experienced some outages throughout the day.

Keno and our virtual sports weren’t available to play online because of the outage, according to a spokesperson for the PA Lottery. Pennsylvania Lottery machines are down. 

Emergency services

Largely, emergency services are still able to respond as needed. In places like Bucks County, where computer issues impacted operations, response time may slow down as calls are manually processed.

Pennsylvania Treasury Department 

The agency does not use Crowdstrike software and, therefore, was not affected, according to press secretary Samantha Heckel.

“We did have a temporary internet outage in our offices,” Heckel told Technical.ly, “but our IT team worked closely with the IT team at the Governor’s Office of Administration and access was restored by 10:15 a.m.”

Pennsylvania Department of Transportation

The agency posted on X that it experienced service disruptions, including at license centers and its customer service department. It restored service by the afternoon.

SEPTA

The local transit agency says its operations have not been impacted by the outage. It is still experiencing delays due to “operator unavailability.”

Philadelphia

City of Philadelphia 

The city is still assessing the impact of the disruption. Staff and employees were expected to report to work. 

Philadelphia First Judicial District Courts

Courts in Philadelphia will be closed on Friday due to the outage, Fox 29 reports. Citizens summoned for jury duty are excused and cases will be rescheduled. 

Visit the court’s website to reschedule hearings.

Philadelphia Police told Technical.ly that its 911 call center and dispatch services are operational.

Philadelphia International Airport 

Lines were longer than normal at the airport throughout the day as major airlines experienced outages. Airport officials directed passengers to their individual airlines for impacts on their flights.

Allegheny County

Allegheny County Department of Human Services

After its website went down early Friday morning, the agency restored it around 2 p.m., according to a post on X. 

Allegheny County Jail

The jail system canceled visitation on Friday because of the outage.

Allegheny County courts

Courts were operational on Friday, but services like marriage licenses were offline.

Allegheny County pools

Pools in Allegheny County remained open, only accepting cash.

Pittsburgh

City of Pittsburgh

The City of Pittsburgh’s systems were unaffected by the recent issues, a representative told Technical.ly. It plans to continue monitoring the situation. 

Pittsburgh Zoo

The zoo remained opened on Friday, operating on a cash-only basis due to the global technical system outage.

Pittsburgh International Airport

On top of airline delays that impacted most other national airports, PIT has been experiencing increased wait times all summer long. The IT disruption has led to several more delays, cancelations and other flight issues.

Pittsburgh Regional Transit

The outage “is affecting a portion of our fare collection systems,” a representative from the agency said. While riders can access the ConnectCard system and fare processing, mobile ticketing was impacted.

Updated at 1 p.m. on July 22 to include new developments.