How NYC Cyber Command reacted to the Microsoft outage caused by CrowdStrike
NEW YORK -- New York City Cyber Command, which is charged with protecting vital systems like 911, was quick to react to Friday's global Microsoft outage.
Cyber Command monitors for cyberthreats against the city 24 hours a day, seven days a week from its headquarters in Downtown Brooklyn.
City officials said while the outage was not a cyberattack, it was an opportunity to put Cyber Command to the test.
"An all-hands-on-deck approach"
Kelly Moan, New York City's chief information security officer and head of Cyber Command, said the city's system outages were minimal.
"From early, early this morning, incredibly well positioned and had a full understanding of what the scope was of the issue, the root cause, and steps we needed to take to remediate, and it's been an all-hands-on-deck approach ever since," said Moan. "This is largely unprecedented, but we do have procedures and plans in place for emergency management and support of theses types of issues."
It was a different story at New York City-area airports, however. Businesses all over the city felt the outage's impact, too.
Mayor Eric Adams said the city has been conducting drills to deal with potential IT outages and cyberattacks.
"We have had citywide engagement for practicing, exercising our disaster recovery plans ... from more broadly issues that could be IT outages or cyberattacks," Moan said.
"The blueprint was already in place"
Adams and other city leaders gathered at City Hall on Friday morning after CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm, said it deployed a faulty update to computers running Microsoft Windows.
"The blueprint was already in place. All we had to do was to execute on it," said Adams. "911 call systems have not been impacted. Our infrastructure and emergency operations, they are all in place."
"For our most critical services, 911-related, 311-related, we isolate and keep it in a separate environment. And we control what updates get pushed into that segment of the environment to ensure that, in a situation like this when something happens, it doesn't take down our most critical systems," said Matt Fraser, New York City's chief technology officer.
Some online services impacted
Some work station computers, servers, apps and websites for city services may still be impacted.
"If you go in to file for a permit or you go in to request some other service, you go to pay a bill online, like a water bill or a parking ticket, you might find yourself in a position where those services may be offline temporarily," said Fraser.
Officials said all remaining problems from Friday's Microsoft outage are being worked on.