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B.C. health care, air traffic hit by global IT outage, ferries and transit unaffected

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B.C. air traffic, health care hit by global IT outage
A worldwide cyber outage caused major disruptions for airlines, hospitals, banks and other services on Friday. Aaron McArthur reports on how it impacted British Columbia. – Jul 19, 2024

The effects of a global cyber outage are being felt in British Columbia.

Disruptions are being felt worldwide in the airline, banking and health-care sectors after cybersecurity firm CrowdStrrike pushed a faulty update to computers running Microsoft Windows.

B.C. Premier David Eby said Friday that provincial emergency management systems, including those related to wildfire operations, were unaffected.

“Which is very positive news given the challenging wildfire situation we’re in currently and that it looks to get worse over the next few days,” Eby said.

Click to play video: 'CrowdStrike outage: Airlines, banks and hospitals impacted worldwide by faulty Microsoft update'
CrowdStrike outage: Airlines, banks and hospitals impacted worldwide by faulty Microsoft update

Eby said the province’s health-care sector was affected, but that the impact was low on patients.

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He said service providers pivoted to working on paper, and that operations were performed as needed.

Health authorities across the province confirmed the province’s health system is experiencing problems with its network and computers.

The authorities say they have implemented contingency plans to ensure services remain operational and patient care is not disrupted.

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People are being directed to call their health-care providers directly if they have questions about appointments Friday, but are being urged not to call hospital switchboards.

“Staff at the Provincial Health Services Authority remain in contact with Crowdstrike, a global cybersecurity firm used by organizations around the world that generated this outage, to discuss solutions,” Health Minister Adrian Dix said in a statement.

“Further investigations are underway to assess the extent of the disruption and a provincial emergency operations centre was activated to assess and mitigate impacts.”

The Ministry of Children and Family Development also suffered minor impacts to a call centre, and there will be a slight delay in the distribution of B.C. child care benefits, Eby added.

The CrowdStrike issue also affected U.S.-bound flights out of the Vancouver International Airport (YVR).

More than 670 U.S. flights were cancelled due to the outage, which has had a spillover effect on scheduling and is resulting in delays.

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In a statement, the airport said it was aware that U.S. Customs and Border Protection was experiencing issues with its technology systems worldwide.

Click to play video: 'Worldwide cyber outage causes disruptions to banking, flights and health-care in B.C.'
Worldwide cyber outage causes disruptions to banking, flights and health-care in B.C.

YVR added that U.S. officials were working on a solution, and travellers with flight itineraries to the United States were encouraged to check their flight status with their airline before coming to the airport.

Passengers at YVR told Global News they had experienced massive waits to get through U.S. customs, while others said they had slept in the airport overnight.

ICBC also reported some impacts, related to a third-party company it uses for vehicle damage estimation and appraisal services.

The insurer said it had a workaround in place to reduce the impact to customers.

Other major systems in B.C. appear to have escaped disruptions from the CrowdStrike incident.

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Eby said the outage did not affect emergency response in B.C.

The call centre for emergency response was impacted, but remained operational, he said. E-Comm, which handles 911 calls, RCMP and the Vancouver Police Department were not affected, he said.

BC Ferries told Global News its systems were not directly impacted and that service was operating normally.

Likewise, TransLink said its systems were not directly affected either, and that Metro Vancouver’s transit system was operating as normal.

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