CASPER, Wyo. — A global IT outage is impacting Wyoming operations on Friday.
According to a social media post on Friday morning, WYDOT said the outage has taken down Driver Services, including issuing of IDs and driver’s licenses. Its website is down, but its road info website is operational.
The Candlewood Suites in Casper posted on social media that its parent company IHG’s system has been affected. IHG brands also include Holiday Inn, Intercontinental and Staybridge, among others.
Banner Health issued a statement saying it has been affected. “Our hospitals are open for in-patient care and medical emergencies,” it said. “All other Banner locations are closed on Friday, July 19, 2024, including clinics, urgent care, imaging and other outpatient facilities.”
The Wyoming Department of Family Services said on its website on Friday morning that its IT systems were “severely affected” by the outage. “We may be unable to access systems to process benefits, but please know everything is being done to remedy this issue,” the department said.
The outage grounded flights around the world, including all Frontier flights at the Denver International Airport.
According to the Associated Press, the issue affected Microsoft 365 apps and was likely caused by a CrowdStrike security tool. It was not believed to be caused by a cyberattack, the Associated Press said.
According to the New York Times, the issue is believed to stem from a security update from the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike meant to prevent online hacking. On Friday, a line of new code sent to computers that run Microsoft Windows started to crash, causing worldwide fallout, including canceled flights around the world, 911 emergency outages and hospital and healthcare disruptions.
