While a faulty software update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike affected customers running Microsoft Windows globally on Friday morning, the effects of the glitch varied in the Golden Triangle.

On Friday, CrowdStrike released a statement on its website, saying the glitch was not the result of hacking or a cyberattack, and that the issue had been identified and a fix had been deployed. The firm updated its statement later in the morning.

“We understand the gravity of the situation and are deeply sorry for the inconvenience and disruption,” the statement read, after being updated at 9:22 a.m. “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.”

CrowdStrike also assured its customers that its Falcon platform was not affected, and Mac and Linux hosts were not impacted.

At 9:43 a.m., Microsoft 365 Status posted an update on X, formerly Twitter.

“We’ve completed our mitigation actions and our telemetry indicates all previously impacted Microsoft 365 apps and services have recovered,” the statement said. “We’re entering a period of monitoring to ensure impact is fully resolved.”

According to reports from the Associated Press, the glitch caused thousands of flights to be delayed or canceled. It also knocked some media outlets offline and disrupted some hospitals.

Golden Triangle Regional Airport Executive Director Matt Dowell said that, while the airport itself did not experience any negative effects from the glitch, some of the airlines it works with did.

“The impact to GTR was flight delays,” Dowell told The Dispatch Friday morning. “Our morning flight was delayed by two hours. And what kind of happens with any airline is, once you have a delay on one flight, then that trickles on to your next flight and so on and so forth. So, so far, we had the delay of the morning flight and there’s an upcoming delay on the afternoon flight.”

OCH Regional Medical Center’s system was also not directly impacted by the outage, though the hospital experienced some related effects. In a written statement sent to The Dispatch, OCH Regional Medical Center Chief Information Officer Charles Greene said some of the hospital’s third-party vendors were impacted.

“Fortunately, the impact on OCH has been minimal and did not directly affect our patients or services,” the email read. “Four services remain down due to the CrowdStrike outage. OCH will continue to monitor the situation and restore systems as they become available.”

The situation was similar at Baptist Memorial Hospital-Golden Triangle.

Baptist corporate Director of Public Relations and Internal Communication Kimberly Alexander told The Dispatch Friday afternoon that the hospitals’ systems were not impacted, but some of the hospital’s third-party vendors were, including in the Golden Triangle.

Alexander said patients should not have been able to notice any difference than they would on a normal day, though.

Powerschool outage

The student information systems software company Powerschool put out a series of status updates Friday morning, saying some of its services were impacted by the Microsoft global outage. Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District posted on social media Friday, saying it was experiencing issues with Powerschool as a part of the outage.

“We are down,” SOCSD Communications Director Haley Montgomery told The Dispatch at about noon on Friday. “The way that that impacts our district is that all of our school registration and all of our student schedules and records are housed through the Powerschool platform, in addition to our school messenger platform, which is how we communicate via email and text message with our parents. Currently, with us being down, if people have not completed their school registration, they’re not able to complete that right now through our online interface.”

Montgomery said school personnel were available to talk with parents over the phone or in person to help with registration. The outage also impacted counselors trying to schedule classes, she said, along with other start-of-school tasks.

Montgomery said SOCSD’s Powerschool system had not been restored and no time frame had been given for the restoration by press time Friday.

Lowndes County School District Public Information Officer Adam Minichino told The Dispatch in a text message that, while the school district uses Schoology – whose parent company is Powerschool – the Lowndes district had not experienced any effects from the outage.

Columbus Municipal School District uses Powerschool as its student information system, according to its website. Calls from The Dispatch to CMSD PIO Nikki Pringle were not returned by press time Friday.