The Social Security Administration (SSA) said that its offices would be closed to the public on Friday due to the global IT outage after cyber-security firm CrowdStrike faced a software issue that disrupted operations for banks, airlines and media firms around the world.
“Due to worldwide IT outage, local Social Security offices are closed to the public today. Longer wait times on our national 800 number are expected. Some online services are unavailable at this time. We appreciate your patience while we work to restore services as quickly as possible,” the agency said in an alert.
In a further update, the SSA updated its statement.
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“Due to widespread IT outages due to the global Microsoft and Crowdstrike issues, local Social Security offices are closed to the public today. Our phone line—800-772-1213—remains open as are most online services at ssa.gov,” the agency said. “We appreciate your patience while we work to restore services as quickly as possible. For people who are deaf or hard of hearing and use TTY, our TTY line remains open—800-325-0778.”
The outage had impacted Microsoft products overnight and in the early hours of July 19, according to the tech giant.
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“Yesterday, CrowdStrike released an update that began impacting IT systems globally,” Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO and chairman, said in a post on X. “We are aware of this issue and are working closely with CrowdStrike and across the industry to provide customers technical guidance and support to safely bring their systems back online.”
The outage has caused chaos for companies around the world, disrupting the work of banks, media businesses and airlines.
CrowdStrike and Microsoft saw their share prices struggle on Friday, as both stocks registered declines.
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Microsoft suggested that reboots of its products can help revive affected services.
“We have received reports of successful recovery from some customers attempting multiple Virtual Machine restart operations on affected Virtual Machines,” the company said on its Azure platform. “We have received feedback from customers that several reboots (as many as 15 have been reported) may be required, but overall feedback is that reboots are an effective troubleshooting step at this stage.”
CrowdStrike, a major player in the market with an 18 percent market share for the 8.6 billion industry, suggested that the issue was not caused by outside interference of the system and that it only affected Microsoft products and that Mac and Linux platforms were not impacted.
“CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack,” George Kurtz, CEO of the company said in a note on X.
Kurtz was apologetic about the disruption the outage had cause.
“We understand the gravity of the situation and are deeply sorry for the inconvenience and disruption. We are working with all impacted customers to ensure that systems are back up and they can deliver the services their customers are counting on,” he wrote in a later update on X. “The issue has been identified and a fix has been deployed. There was an issue with a Falcon content update for Windows Hosts.”
Update 7/19/24, 11:40 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with additional context and comments Microsoft CEO Nadella and CrowdStrike’s company head Kurtz. Also updated was a statement from the Social Security Administration.
Patrick Semansky/AP