Philadelphia city officials say there's still work to do after global IT outage

PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) -- The overnight IT outage is impacting potentially millions of people worldwide, including many in the Philadelphia region.

Still, city officials were breathing a collective sigh of relief on Friday given that the situation could have been much worse.

But there was still a lot of work to do to bring city systems back online, and that work isn't over yet.

"We're going to keep at this until every computer system, every laptop, and every component of our IT apparatus are working exactly the way that they should," Mayor Cherelle Parker said. "That's the City of Philadelphia way."

In the early morning hours the Philadelphia Office of Emergency Management realized something was wrong with its computers.

"Every server and computer that was powered up on our network during the update was affected. The City of Philadelphia employee systems were completely inoperable," said Melissa Scott, the city's chief information officer.

IT technicians got to work to fix each computer individually, but that will take time.

Critical services provided by the city remained up and running. Police and fire say they were able to answer every 911 call as they continue to work to make sure all of their computers are running.

"IT technicians are deployed to every city department based on priority to install the update and get the city computers and servers back online," Scott said.

The city is also ready to deploy genius bars in every office building to ensure employees can get their laptops repaired quickly.

The Courts of Philadelphia, all First Judicial District Courts and offices were closed Friday. All cases that were scheduled for the day will be rescheduled.

City officials say work will continue throughout the weekend to make sure all their technology is up and working come Monday morning.

Read more on the city's response to the outage at phila.gov.

What we know about the issue

Much of the world faced online disarray Friday as a widespread technology outage affected companies and services across industries - grounding flights, knocking banks and hospital systems offline and media outlets off air.

At the heart of the massive disruption is CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm that provides software to scores of companies worldwide. The company says the problem occurred when it deployed a faulty update to computers running Microsoft Windows, noting that the issue behind the outage was not a security incident or cyberattack.

In a statement about the ongoing situation, the company said the defect was found "in a single content update for Windows hosts" - noting that Mac and Linux systems were not impacted.

But, because scores of companies rely on CrowdStrike for their security needs with Windows as their operating system, the consequences of this kind of technical problem have been far-reaching.

Disruptions on Friday have continued hours after CrowdStrike first identified the issue. But both the company and Microsoft say that they're working to get systems back online.

In an emailed statement, Crowdstrike said that it was "actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts" - adding that a fix "had been deployed" for the identified issue.

PHL Impact

Lines were long at Philadelphia International Airport on Friday due to the global outage but some airlines are slowly getting back up and running.

There was a lot of uncertainty as airlines scramble to get caught up, and the impact could last for several days.

PHL officials say passengers need to check with their airlines for updates.

Hospital Impact

This CrowdStrike outage impacted hospital services on Friday.

Emergency rooms were still open, however, some hospitals are delaying procedures and shifting patients amid the outage.

Three of the major medical groups impacted are Penn Medicine, Main Line Health and Virtua Health.

All three hospitals report issues with their computer systems that have impacted some of their services, including scheduled surgeries.

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The good news is that impacted hospitals are finding ways to "work around" the issue and still see patients who are most in-need, including emergency room patients.

There are also hospitals that have not been impacted.

Temple Health, Jefferson Health (which includes Einstein), Cooper Hospital and Tower Health (which includes St. Christopher's Hospital for Children) are all operating normally and have not been impacted.