Global IT systems outage affecting local services

Friday’s global IT systems outage has been affecting services in Chatham-Kent, officials say.

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In a social media post, the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance stated patients should expect delays in service and potential appointment cancellations following the outage.

“TransForm, our regional IT service provider, is working diligently on restoration efforts while staff in our hospitals use downtime procedures, including paper charting,” the post stated.

What to expect:

• Emergency department: Expect longer wait times today
• Surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, diagnostic imaging (X-ray, CT, MRI, ultrasound, mammography): You will be contacted directly by your hospital if this outage impacts your appointment or procedure.

The hospital thanked people for their patience.

Chatham-Kent said it was experiencing an outage of the employee recruitment tool and jobs board, which use a third-party software provider that is affected, but this has been resolved.

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“All municipal services, including Riverview Gardens and the provincial offenses court, are not experiencing any public-facing service impacts related to this outage,” the release stated,

All municipal services are currently open and operating, including ServiceOntario.

The outage is related to an issue with the Crowdstrike Falcon platform, a cyber security platform used worldwide.

“Delays in service may occur through our partners that utilize this platform. Services may be disrupted as our partners navigate this difficult situation,” the release added.

Computer systems at businesses and public services around the globe were disrupted after a botched update of a widely used cybersecurity program took down Microsoft Corp. systems.

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Microsoft Although and the American cybersecurity company CrowdStrike announced later Friday morning that the issues causing the global outage had been resolved, some problems continued to persist.

Long delays were experienced by commuters on Friday morning at the Windsor-Detroit Tunnel as border officers switched to manual processing, but traffic appeared to flow unimpeded at the Ambassador Bridge.

The significant internet outage impacting Microsoft caused global disruptions to flights, banks, and hospitals, with issues and delays persisted for hours despite the technology company’s efforts to resolve the problem affecting access to Microsoft 365 apps and services.

With files from Postmedia

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