An internal system update appears to have caused an internet connectivity issue at CN on Tuesday afternoon, CN said on Wednesday. The issue affected the Canadian railway’s customer service portal as well as passenger rail service in the Toronto area.
“We have determined that the outage was caused by an internal system update which affected CN’s ability to connect to the Internet. There is no indication of a cyber security incident, no data was impacted, and at no time was the safety of the public compromised,” CN said.
Passenger rail service via GO trains and VIA trains in and out of Union Station in Toronto, as well as CN’s customer service portal, had been impacted by the connectivity issue as they all required an internet connection to CN’s servers, CN (NYSE: CNI) said Tuesday afternoon. CN worked with GO trains and took over train dispatching responsibilities so that GO and VIA trains could resume service.
As of 8 p.m. ET on Tuesday, CN’s internet connectivity was restored and its customer service portal and EDI system were operational. CN trains also did not experience any major delays, according to the railway.
“We will be meeting with Metrolinx to go over the incident and ensure the appropriate processes are put in place to avoid having this issue reoccur,” CN said.
Several days ago, U.S. peer, eastern U.S. Class I railroad Norfolk Southern (NYSE: NSC), experienced a brief system outage last Friday evening and into early Saturday morning that impacted rail operations, including NS’ dispatching system, train movements and functionality of its terminal operating system. NS said it believed the outage — the second in two months — was related to a vendor product defect and was not a cybersecurity incident. NS resolved the issue but warned customers that delays might result from the short-lived outage.
NS attributed the first system outage in late August to a software defect.
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