The global technology outage on Friday morning brought air travel, banks, hospitals and other small businesses, in addition to media firms, to a halt. But within the Bay Area, the collapse also caused local courts to postpone many proceedings.
The courts in Alameda and Santa Clara counties announced Friday morning that they’d experienced disruptions to their computer systems and warned the general public to expect delays.
The outage was brought on by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, and never a hacker or cyberattack, officials said. The troubled update affected computers running Microsoft Windows. The company apologized and said a fix was on the best way.
The Alameda County Superior Court stated that “both of our primary case management systems and dozens of computers were either down or operating at limited capacity” and urged people using the court's services to be patient and expect delays. In the meantime, the court will remain open and anyone who was scheduled to seem in court must proceed to indicate up.
“We are working diligently to fix our systems,” Alameda County Chief Judge Thomas Nixon said in a press release. “Our dedicated staff, from our information technology office to our clerks, will continue to ensure our community has access to the courts.”
In Santa Clara County, desktop devices in all courthouses were affected by the outage, requiring the IT team to work through the night to revive the network and systems.
To minimize disruption and proceed to offer essential court services, the court said it’s prioritizing courtrooms with morning appointments, ensuring that safety-related equipment continues to operate, and maintaining operations on the clerk's public service desks.
Dan Radovich, communications officer and ADA coordinator for the San Mateo County Superior Court, said in an email to the Bay Area News Group that the court is experiencing “residual impacts” from the outage and users may experience delays. However, the court remains to be open and explained that anyone who needs to seem in court must proceed to accomplish that.
However, Contra Costa County's court system was not completely offline throughout the outage. A Contra Costa County spokesperson said the outage had no operational impact on services and folks who need to seem in court can accomplish that in person or remotely.
Although the Contra Costa County District Attorney's Office is open to the general public, a spokesperson said IT staff there are working to revive connectivity to network systems affected by the outage and that some jobs have been partially restored.
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