Federal agencies affected by worldwide IT outage 

At least a handful of federal agencies have been impacted by the Microsoft outage linked to the software firm CrowdStrike that’s resulted in massive issues for businesses worldwide. 

In a post on X, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security said they “are working with CrowdStrike, Microsoft and our federal, state, local and critical infrastructure partners to fully assess and address system outages.” President Joe Biden has been briefed on the matter and his team is in touch with CrowdStrike and “impacted entities,” a White House official told a pool reporter. 

The Social Security Administration, meanwhile, has closed all offices Friday because of a “global IT outage,” according to the agency’s website. SSA said that individuals should expect longer call wait times for its national 800 number and that “some online services are unavailable.”

The Justice Department was also affected and has alerted users, according to an emailed statement from a spokesperson.

“The DOJ Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) is actively troubleshooting possible workarounds with Component CIOs and technical teams while CrowdStrike, the vendor, is attempting to resolve the problem,” the spokesperson said.

An agency manager within the Department of Homeland Security reported to FedScoop that some of their staff had trouble logging into desktop computers and had to spend the morning working on phones or through virtual desktop or web pages applications. DHS’s Federal Emergency Management Agency, meanwhile, experienced “some” issues with its systems, but an agency spokesperson said “there are no impacts to FEMA’s critical or immediate lifesaving and life-sustaining operations. There is also no evidence of any data loss. As we work to resolve these issues, we continue to serve survivors and our state, local, tribal and territorial partners across the country.”

The Enterprise Service Desk at the Department of Veterans Affairs is also down, according to a person familiar with the matter, though it’s not yet clear if it’s related to the CrowdStrike flaw. Terrence Hayes, the VA’s press secretary, told FedScoop that the agency is not currently aware of any impact on health care operations or “any adverse impact on veterans who get their care from VA.” The department is continuing to monitor the situation and “standing by and ready to help” veterans that need support, he added.

The Federal Aviation Administration said it was “closely monitoring a technical issue impacting IT systems at U.S. airlines” but did not say whether the issue had impacted government-operated systems. The agency later added that current “FAA operations are not impacted by the global IT issue” but that it is monitoring the situation.

A Federal Trade Commission spokesperson said in an email that “like many other organizations worldwide that rely on Microsoft for software and hardware, we have been affected by the CrowdStrike outage. We are working to resolve these impacts now.”

NASA also saw “some impact to various Microsoft 365 apps and services,” according to a spokesperson. The space agency “is assessing potential impacts to agency systems related to Microsoft partner CrowdStrike” and is “continuing to monitor the situation.”

Regular operations to the Energy Department website were restored late Friday morning after it appeared to be offline earlier in the day — several attempts to visit the energy.gov domain resulted in a 503 error noting that a backend fetch failed. The Energy Department did not respond to a request for comment about whether the CrowdStrike issue was related to the error message. 

A National Nuclear Security Administration spokesperson told FedScoop that “DOE is working with CrowdStrike, Microsoft, and federal, state, local, and critical infrastructure partners to fully assess and address system outages.”

In response to a request for comment, the Department of Education pointed to its post X acknowledging that users may have had difficulty reaching the agency by phone because of the current outages. The department said that all of the agency’s customer-facing services and operations are now “securely restored and operating normally.”

A Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesperson told FedScoop in an email Friday that the agency is operating normally. Additionally, the spokesperson said that U.S. commercial nuclear facilities reported that they are operating safely. 

A Treasury Department spokesperson said the agency’s mission critical systems are online and experienced “little impact” from the incident. “There were no disruptions to outgoing payments and IRS systems that experienced brief disruptions were quickly resolved. Treasury officials have been in close contact with key financial sector leadership and regulators which are collectively monitoring the incident.”

In 2021, CISA brought on CrowdStrike to provide endpoint detection and response technology to enhance its Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program and protect federal civilian agencies’ networks.

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts said in an email that “IT officials are continuing to assess the situation, but federal courts remain operational, with no major disruptions reported.”

This story will be updated as new information becomes available.