Mayor Eric Adams: I often recall, although this was not, it was not a cyber attack, I recall when I was briefed by the former mayor, he said one of the major concerns is dealing with any form of IT outage, including if it is a cyber attack. We need to be prepared. With that in mind, Chief of Staff Camille Joseph Varlack has been hosting a series of drills. We just recently did one to deal with any type of IT outage slash cyber attack. It was good to see how quickly the team coordinated… CTO Fraser called me around a little after midnight last night and gave me a preliminary briefing that what was taking place and reached out to the other team members and everything kicked into gear. We see the results of that from not only the notifications he made this morning, but also the coming together of the team. The blueprint was already in place. All we had to do was to execute on it.
I just want to thank all these city agencies, as well as our partners in other agencies like the MTA. We have we're here to update New Yorkers on this global I.T. outage involving CrowdStrike. CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity software prevalent in computers across the globe. Their goal, as the chief technology officer would explain, is to identify if there is a problem and to immediately take action. Early this morning, they sent out a software update that inadvertently took systems offline. They sent out a software update that inadvertently took systems offline.
This was not a cyber attack that was a hit or a cyber hit on our city infrastructure. Our city's IT and security teams, led by the Office of Technology and Innovation, have been working nonstop to troubleshoot problems and restore security. The CTO, Matt Fraser, has been directly in touch with CrowdStrike to get real-time updates and identify the fastest path to getting all systems up and running as quickly as possible. I just really want to emphasize this was not a cyber attack. This was an update that took systems offline.
This is why the preparation is so important that the chief of staff is in charge of doing to make sure that we can immediately respond if there is an IT disruption of this magnitude or if there is a cyber attack. We have to be prepared, and this is what the drills are for. There are no calls being held or missed, and there is no backlog at the FDNY and FDNY is reviewing to ensure this remains the case. We want to ensure New Yorkers that 911's call systems have not been impacted. Our infrastructure and emergency operations, they are all in place and we are going to continue to do that.
Life saving complaints that come through 311 or city agencies are being prioritized. Our traffic signals are working and are fully operational as is the Staten Island Ferry. Our water systems are fully operational. Our Summer Rising program will continue as scheduled, including bus service. Although we want to tell parents, you may see disruption on the bus tracking app. The systems are still operating.
We expect to continue to see cascading effects of the outage throughout the day. New York City Office of Technology will be doing everything possible to minimize potential service disruptions and restore service to our system as soon as possible. Our city agencies’ IT department will be prioritizing this work today to get things back up and operating online based on the priority of those particular systems. We want to make sure New Yorkers are safe and they can rely on the city services they need.
This is a developing situation. We are assured by the coordination that's taken place from all the agencies involved, as well as the entities that are responsible such as CrowdStrike to make sure we can get this underhand without a minimum amount of interruptions in our city.
