Federal government 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 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. 

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.

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.

The Energy Department’s website also appears to be offline. 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 is related to the outage. 

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. 

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.

This story will be updated as new information becomes available.