Global IT outage hits home in Winnipeg, some services come back online

Posted on July 19, 2024 by Peggy

A widespread tech outage that has impacted many industries around the globe has also hit home in Winnipeg, but some services are starting to be restored.

All Dynacare medical laboratories across the province were temporarily closed due to an outage to the company’s systems, but some operations are coming back online.

Dynacare said in a statement Friday afternoon the main Winnipeg lab is up and running again. The Garden City and St. Vital laboratory and health services centres are also back online.

Dynacare also anticipates its Seasons of Tuxedo location will be “open shortly as well,” the statement said.

“Our focus is to have as many of our locations back up and running for Saturday service as possible,” the statement said.

“This does require us to manually reset the systems in each locations,” the statement also said. Dynacare’s website will be updated with current location hours as soon as possible.

Goldeyes, Fringe ticketing affected

The Goldeyes, the city’s professional baseball team, posted on social media accounts earlier in the day that its in-house ticket system were also affected. However, a representative with the team told CBC News its system was back online.

Similarly, the Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival’s ticketing system is offline. The event, running from July 17-28 this year, posted on its website that advance tickets are not available at the moment.

Tickets will continue to be available for in-person sales at each venue starting 30 minutes before the start of the day’s opening performance. After that, tickets for following shows go on sale 15 minutes after the start of the previous performance.

An alert sent by global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike to its clients and reviewed by Reuters said the company’s Falcon Sensor software is causing Microsoft Windows to crash.

The problem crashed Windows machines and servers, sending them into a loop of recovery so they couldn’t restart.

“This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed,” company CEO George Kurtz said in a message posted on social media.

Manitoba’s public health system is not directly affected by the CrowdStrike outage. Its digital services use a different provider for cybersecurity, a spokesperson for Shared Health, the organization that oversees health-care delivery in the province, said in an email to CBC News.

“We understand that Dynacare labs are closed today across Manitoba, which is causing heavier outpatient traffic than usual at various hospital labs. No patient needing a blood lab will be turned away as long as they have a valid requisition form, but they are cautioned that wait times may be longer due to the increased traffic and the need for lab staff to prioritize our hospital-based patients.”

Porter Airlines has also cancelled flights in Canada until 3 p.m.

The Winnipeg Airports Authority urges passengers on any airline to check the status of their flights, and if flights are cancelled, not to go to the airport.

The airport itself has not been impacted by the CrowdStrike issue, a spokesperson said.