IT outage affects area, state, country

VW independent staff

Friday’s global IT outage didn’t just affect local 911 services, it had a more widespread affect.

Coast-to-coast 911 issues were reported Friday’s morning and banks, airports, airlines, some hospitals and media companies using Microsoft Windows computers were affected by the outage as well. Thousands of flights were canceled as Microsoft-based computers stopped working. 

CrowdStrike – a U.S.-based cybersecurity company – admitted responsibility and said the outage was caused by a software issue. By late morning, the company said the issue had been identified and a fix had been deployed. However, they acknowledged the fix may not immediately restore all disrupted services.

Along with disrupted 911 service locally, some Van Wert County residents expecting direct deposit paychecks learned the money wasn’t in their accounts. First Federal of Van Wert was one of the banks affected.

“First Federal is experiencing issues related to the CrowdStrike technology issue,” the bank said in a Facebook post. “It is affecting direct deposits and ACH transactions. Please be patient as they find a solution for the issue. All transactions will post once the issue is resolved.”

Van Wert Federal Savings Bank also said customers may experience intermittent issues with online banking, mobile banking and loan and deposit transactions posting, but officials said the bank’s service provider was working to get the issue resolved.

BMV and local title services weren’t available Friday morning. Van Wert County Clerk of Courts Cindy Mollenkopf posted on Facebook that the title department couldn’t issue any titles until the outage was resolved.

OhioHealth Van Wert Hospital reported no issues Friday morning.

“The widespread CrowdStrike outage has had minimal impact on OhioHealth’s clinical operations, OhioHealth spokesperson Lindsey Gordon said. “OhioHealth Southeastern Medical Center was impacted but services have been restored. The ability for remote radiology reading has been impacted but is not affecting patient care. All surgeries, procedures and appointments are proceeding as scheduled.”