Technology outage had biggest effect on hospital, county operations

By Anna Jauhola
A week after a global technology outage, Holly Knutson was still dealing with the aftermath at Kittson Healthcare in Hallock.
“We started seeing an issue Thursday evening with our nursing home software,” she said, referring to July 18. “It’s a cloud-based application with Microsoft.”
By Friday morning, Knutson, chief information officer, said they began seeing the infamous blue screens associated with the CloudStrike error which caused the outage.
“It affected every computer in the facility except maybe 10 of them,” Knutson said.
Within the Kittson Healthcare hospital, clinic, ER and nursing home there are about 160 computers.
On Friday, July 19, there was a worldwide technology outage that affected computers with Microsoft Windows operating systems. The source was an error in an update provided through the company CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity group. This error caused global issues, including grounded flights, interrupted television broadcasts and disrupted businesses like banks, hospitals and retailers. The error caused millions of computer systems to crash, requiring information technology coordinators across the world to manually fix the issues.
Knutson had to physically reinstall the Windows operating system on every affected computer.
The error completely shut down computer operations within Kittson Healthcare, which left personnel using their downtime procedures. Knutson said her first priority was the emergency room when the outage happened as patients had come in. While she worked on getting those computers working, the hospital and ER staff implemented their downtime procedures. Knutson said Hospital Director of Nursing Tawnya Sorenson and her team “have the most amazing downtime process. If their hands are tied behind their back, they can still function.”
The crew had some computer function, but for the most part, they went back to paper charts and using the telephone. The radiology department could still take X-rays and CT scans, but couldn’t send pictures to be read.
In the nursing home, the lack of computers had an effect, but staff figured out a process for medication distribution without using a computerized system.
By Thursday afternoon, July 25, Knutson had finished correcting the bad patch file that caused the issues. She noted the incident did not affect any of Kittson Healthcare’s sensitive information.
Things weren’t as bad at the county level, said Lance Henrickson, director of information technology for Kittson County.
“It just affected a certain amount of systems. It didn’t affect every system,” he said. “We were able to continue serving residents. And we were fully functional by Monday (July 22).”
Mostly state systems such as those used in the motor vehicles and the assessor’s offices were directly affected. Between the courthouse and the highway department, Henrickson manages about 100 computers. He said those that were left on during the outage, which took place around 11 p.m. on July 19 in the Central Time Zone, were affected.
“We were blindsided by this,” Henrickson said. “But it didn’t compromise any of our security.”
A few local businesses saw the side-effects of the outage, like Valley Vision. Employees could not access their computer system early Friday afternoon on July 19. But they were up and running by the following week.
Several retail businesses throughout town said they did not have issues due to the technology outage.
American Federal Bank in Hallock was not affected by the issue. Director of IT Mark Johnson said the company has protocol in place that requires them to test all patches and updates before they’re put in place.
“American Federal didn’t have the ‘Microsoft Update + CrowdStrike’ software combination that caused issues with many companies,” Johnson said. “However, even if we had, it still would not have impacted us to the point of being critically limited in function.”
United Valley Bank in Hallock said they also were not affected by the issue.
The city of Hallock had trouble connecting with the Minnesota Department of Revenue and accessing online banking. Thankfully, City Clerk/Administrator Kendra Kroening said they’d taken care of business before the issue affected the state.