A massive technology outage Friday morning caused widespread disruptions across industries, but it’s mostly business as usual at America’s ports.
The global outage grounded flights and impacted local governments and a variety of companies. Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said a defect in a content update for Windows, not a security incident or cyberattack, caused the outage. The issue has been identified and a resolution is coming, the statement said.
Most ports FreightWaves spoke to Friday morning said they were operating without issue.
Services were not impacted at ports in Georgia, Baltimore, Seattle, Virginia, New York and New Jersey.
Port Houston, which handles the most foreign waterborne tonnage in the nation, closed its Barbours Cut and Bayport Container terminals. The port reopened the terminals around 9 a.m. There was minimal delay to operations, port spokeswoman Lisa Ashley-Daniels told FreightWaves.
George Kurtz, president and CEO of CrowdStrike, apologized on NBC’s “Today” show Friday morning for a “software bug” that caused the outage.
“It could be some time for some systems that just automatically won’t recover,” he said.
Disruptions to services nationwide
Some 27,000 flights were delayed Friday and nearly 2,800 were canceled, according to FlightAware. United Airlines, Delta Air Lines and American Airlines ordered a global ground stop, U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell, a member of the House cybersecurity subcommittee, said on X.
Certain Baltimore County systems were impacted by the outage, the county posted on X. Many 911 call centers were not working in Alaska, local news outlets reported.
Mass General Brigham, a health care system in Massachusetts, canceled all non-urgent visits Friday due to lack of access to clinical systems caused by the technology issue.