Governor Wes Moore provides update on statewide impact of CrowdStrike information technology outage

The highly publicized incident is related to an update to the Falcon Sensor product in the latest version of Microsoft’s CrowdStrike platform. At around 3 a.m., Maryland received confirmation of a statewide IT outage affecting Windows servers and workstations. The issue is not related to a security incident, but to a faulty software update distributed through the company. CrowdStrike is distributing another automatic update to fix the bug, but in some cases, manual patches are required.

While the global incident impacted systems across Maryland, most state agencies reported minimal disruption with brief outages or blue screens that have since been resolved.

The Maryland Department of Emergency Management is leading the statewide coordination effort to respond to the incident. This morning, the department increased its state activation level to Partial and the State Emergency Operations Center remains activated.

The Maryland Department of Information Technology is working closely with state agency partners to develop a vendor workaround to repair systems that cannot receive the automatic fix. The department is also working closely with CrowdStrike and Microsoft to restore affected services to state agencies.

The Maryland Department of Health, its contractors and healthcare partners are experiencing various technical issues related to the incident. Some Department facilities, including the Division of Vital Records and local civil registrars, continue to experience outages. In coordination with the Maryland Institute for Emergency Medical Services Systems, the Department continues to monitor outages in critical medical systems.

The Maryland Department of Transportation reported that several airlines operating out of Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport were affected by the incident. The flights are taking place as airlines work to fully resume operations. Travelers are advised to confirm flight status with their airline before arriving at the airport and to expect delays. Maryland EZPass users should expect longer than usual wait times and processing times for toll transactions. Other department services and operations were not affected by the incident.

The Department of Information Technology and the Maryland Security Operations Center continue to monitor the situation. The State of Maryland remains committed to providing guidance, coordination, resources, and support to our partners until the issue is fully resolved.”