San Joaquin County public services are temporarily disrupted due to a faulty anti-virus update affecting computer systems stateside and abroad, while the city of Stockton seems to have largely been spared any significant disruption.
At least one flight into Stockton’s airport has also been canceled due to the update.
There has been a widespread outage computer outage as a result of a faulty content update from the U.S.-based tech company CrowdStrike, which provides cybersecurity both stateside and internationally. The update reportedly primarily affects Microsoft Windows operating computers, causing a critical system error, also known as a blue screen of death, when the update was installed.
The faulty content update has impacted computers globally, causing considerable disruption to services such as the airline industries, which are temporarily halting flights across the country.
Allegiant Airlines canceled a flight heading into Stockton Metropolitan Airport due to ongoing flight disruption, Hilary Crowley a deputy county administrator for San Joaquin County, told Stocktonia Friday. The airport is recommending passengers affected by the outage to call the Allegiant Airlines customer service directly for flight updates or rescheduling flights.
Government services across San Joaquin County have been affected by the outage to varying degrees, from not at all to unspecified levels of disruption, Crowley said. the county’s IT department is working to resolve issues as they arise.
Crowley said the county was unable to confirm which services have been disrupted.
SJ County Board of Supervisors Chairman Miguel Villapudua said in a news release earlier Friday that county offices are currently expected to remain open, noting that while business transactions may be impacted, phone lines remain operational should residents need to contact any county office.
“(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 in the release.
The San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office is not reporting any disruptions to services at this time, sheriff’s spokesperson Andres Lopez told Stocktonia.
The city of Stockton is reporting little disruption due to its minimal deployment of the CrowdStrike software, city spokesperson Connie Cochran told Stocktonia. Cochran did confirm that computers in police and fire vehicles were temporarily down, but the issue was resolved after rebooting the computers.
Stockton Police confirmed that the department experienced a temporary disruption of its California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System (CLETS) Message Management System for approximately two to three hours around 5 a.m Friday morning.
The CLETS system provides access to various records and document databases needed by law enforcement, such as warrants or DMV records for traffic stops.
The San Joaquin County Office of Education also reported on Facebook about ongoing service outages due to the global technology outage but did not specify what within the organization had been affected. Office of Education officials noted that it will be delayed in responding to emails.
The Office of Education confirmed to Stocktonia Friday evening that staff computers and email accounts were temporarily inaccessible but noted that the impact of the outage was mitigated due to students being on summer break.
CrowdStike released a statement early Friday morning clarifying that the computer outage is not a result of a cyberattack and that the company is working to push a fix to its anti-virus software.
“We understand the gravity of the situation and are deeply sorry for the inconvenience and disruption,” CrowdStrike officials said in the company’s release. “We are working with all impacted customers to ensure that systems are back up and they can deliver the services their customers are counting on.”
To temporarily address the issue, CrowdStrike published several workarounds on its website for both individual host computers as well as public cloud environments if their computers are unable to remain.
This is a developing story.