Boston hospitals, flights, transit hit in worldwide Microsoft outage

The Crowdstrike outage affecting Microsoft computers worldwide Friday caused disruptions for at hospitals, airports and more across the Boston area.

Several hospital systems in the Boston postponed elective surgeries and medical appointments in the aftermath of the global outage. The Registry of Motor Vehicles canceled vehicle inspections across Massachusetts and, for a time, canceled appointments. Courtroom operations and MBTA bus and train arrival time data were impacted as well.

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"The Healey-Driscoll Administration is closely monitoring the CrowdStrike technology outage and working to mitigate any impacts on Massachusetts," a spokesperson for Gov. Maura Healey said Friday morning as what one expert called "the largest IT outage in history" came into better light.

The governor's office said the Department of Transportation was the only Executive Branch agency that uses CrowdStrike services significantly, though some independent agencies, municipalities and the Trial Court also rely on CrowdStrike to some extent.

The tech outage did not affect Massachusetts' 911 emergency reporting system though public safety officials were monitoring that function closely, Healey's office said. But in New Hampshire, 911 services were affected.

At the Massachusetts RMV, all customer service center appointments scheduled for Friday morning were canceled "as many workstations at centers are not operational," and the statewide vehicle inspection system was not available, the Registry said. Road test appointments were still taking place as planned Friday.

Because some Massachusetts hospitals were affected by the outage and many chose to cancel elective procedures Friday, the Department of Public Health was working with hospitals to put procedures in place for any downtime so they can continue to provide care, the governor's office said.

DPH activated its Department Operations Center in Marlborough to take any calls from health care providers across the state.

The Massachusetts Port Authority said Friday morning that its systems were not affected by the CrowdStrike issue. But some airlines that fly in and out of Logan International Airport were experiencing computer issues that led to delays, and Massport urged travelers to check with their airline to find out whether their travel might be impacted.

The Massachusetts judiciary experienced "technical issues in some areas of operation" on Friday morning, a spokeswoman said.

"About half of staff workstations were impacted by the outage and are in the process of being restored," court spokeswoman Jennifer Donahue said in a statement. "In addition, the Trial Court’s transcript recording system, For The Record (FTR) is not operating in a number of courthouses, which is causing a delay in some court sessions. The Trial Court’s case management system and public portals, MassCourts.org, are fully functional."

The outage did not affect the Massachusetts Legislature, where lawmakers were holding double-barreled Friday formal sessions to get an overdue fiscal year 2025 budget to the governor's desk.

"We are not aware of any disruptions to IT infrastructure, and continue to monitor the situation closely as it unfolds," House and Senate spokespeople said in a joint statement to the State House News Service.

There was no impact on service at the MBTA, but the bus and commuter rail real-time tracking data available to riders was unavailable for part of Friday morning. It was eventually restored.

The cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said the issue involved a defect found in one of its content updates for Windows hosts. The issue thought to be causing the outage is not a security incident or cyberattack, the company said.

"The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed. We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website," the company said.

Here's more info on what was impacted across Greater Boston:

Issues with flights at Boston's Logan airport

There were long lines at Boston Logan International Airport, where dozens of planes were delayed or canceled personnel cited a computer issue.

The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement Friday that it is "closely monitoring a technical issue impacting IT systems at U.S. airlines. Several airlines have requested FAA assistance with ground stops for their fleets until the issue is resolved."

Communication issues come less than an hour after Microsoft resolved its service management operations and connectivity issues that impacted several low-cost carriers.

It's not clear whether the decision to delay new flights is related to that issue. However, Frontier Airlines, Sun Country Airlines and Allegiant were impacted by the problem.

Though leaders with Frontier, according to Reuters, said they were in the process of resuming normal operations late Thursday night, and that their ground stop had been lifted.

This comes after Frontier canceled 147 flights and delayed 212 others Thursday, according FlightAware.

The affected airlines said in a statement they are working to resolve this issue.

Issues at RMV, MBTA

Gov. Maura Healey's office says that while there's no impact on MBTA service, Commuter Rail real time train location and arrival prediction information were unavailable. This technical issue is also affecting boarding information at Boston stations.

T officials said they were "working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible."

Also impacted was the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles, which canceled appointments into the afternoon.

Credit card payments couldn't be made online and car inspections did not occur, according to Healey's office.

Massive IT outage hits hospitals across Mass.

More than 40 hospitals and health care systems in Massachusetts use Epic, a popular cloud-based electronic health records system that was impacted by the digital disruption.

"It’s a big, big, big deal that it's down," said phlebotomist Kerry Grant, who works at Massachusetts General Hospital-Waltham.

Mass General Brigham and Dana Farber were among the Massachusetts health care giants that postponed non-emergency procedures Friday.

All elective and non-emergent surgeries, procedures and non-urgent ambulatory care at Mass General Brigham sites will be canceled for Friday, a spokesperson for Mass General said.

An urgent internal memo at Mass General said it has activated incident command across the system. All leadership and technical teams were working on addressing it, using what's known as "downtime procedures" developed in training.

A Tufts Medical Center spokesperson said they were "in close contact with the vendor. We are in the process of assessing the impact of the disruption on our clinical and surgical operations."

A source at Newton-Wellesley Hospital said it was like being back in the dark ages: using paper charts, lab requisition orders, lots of phone calls and delays between units.

At Mass General, a former employee told NBC10 Boston they rely on Microsoft Teams for vital hospital operations and constant communication in the hospital, such as scheduling, meetings and internal messaging.

Boston EMS says they were dealing with some system issues, but ​their 911 calls haven't been affected​, adding that their services have been and continue to be available.

The Department of Public Health is working with hospitals to go to downtime procedures and continue to provide care, Healey's office said, adding that the department's Operations Center in Marlborough is taking calls from healthcare providers.

"The administration is aware of national reports that some banks have been impacted and is monitoring the situation in Massachusetts," said a spokesperson. "We are aware that some airlines have been affected, which is causing impacts to flight. We are in touch with Massport, who urges passengers to check with their airline for flight status."

Mass., NH 911 systems

Massachusetts' 911 system didn't experience problems during the outage Friday morning.

In New Hampshire, however, the 911 server system was briefly experiencing a temporary interruption believed to have been caused by a software vendor, the Division of Emergency Services and Communications said.

Residents were reminded to only call or text 911 if they're experiencing an emergency.

Outage causes disruptions for businesses in Mass., NH

Many businesses across the region were affected, though for patrons of a Starbucks in Beverly, there was an upside — the store gave out free drinks at the drive-thru Friday morning for the inconvenience.

A Home Depot on Route 28 in Salem, New Hampshire, was experiencing system issues.

In Boston, the city officials said services may be impacted by the global technology service outage. They asked residents to call ahead before trying to access service at municipal building.

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