Saskatoon Transit, Access Transit disrupted during global technology outage

Saskatoon Transit and Access Transit were working with support teams on Friday to resolve disruptions caused by a worldwide Microsoft system outage.

According to Saskatoon Transit, incoming phone lines, real-time bus location updates on apps, service alerts and mobile ticketing purchases were all disrupted. The customer service centre was also experiencing a high volume of inquiries, the City of Saskatoon said.

Incoming phone lines to Access Transit were also disrupted.

On Friday evening, Saskatoon Transit and Access Transit’s incoming phone lines, as well as mobile ticket purchases on the Transit and TGo apps, were working again, while bus location updates and service alerts were still down. By Saturday afternoon, the city said all of the Saskatoon Transit and Access Transit disruptions had been resolved.

The global technology outage grounded flights, affected hospitals and backed up border crossings in Canada on Friday.

Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said the problem occurred when it deployed a faulty update to computers running Microsoft Windows — and that the outage was not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue affected Microsoft 365 apps and services, and disruptions continued after the technology company said it was gradually fixing the problem.

Brent Arnold, a Toronto-based cybersecurity and technology lawyer, called Friday’s outage a software update gone wrong.

“This may be, I think, the biggest scale one that we’ve seen,” said Arnold, a partner at law firm Gowling WLG.

Afternoon Headlines

Get the latest headlines, breaking news and columns.

By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.

The Canada Border Services Agency said it had experienced a partial systems outage of its telephone reporting system, primarily used by small aircraft passengers and boaters, that had since been resolved.

Banks in Canada were “reviewing the situation based on updates from their technology partners,” a spokeswoman for the Canadian Bankers Association said.

At least one major Canadian telecommunications carrier said the outage had affected its operations.

A spokeswoman for Telus said some of its employees were unable to access “the tools and systems necessary to support our customers.” The company was working with “the utmost urgency” to get the systems working again, she said.

Bell and Rogers, two of the other major carriers, said their networks were unaffected.

Canada Post said a small number of post offices across the country appeared to be affected by the outage, calling the impact to customers “minimal.”

Microsoft 365 posted on social media platform X that the company was “working on rerouting the impacted traffic to alternate systems to alleviate impact” and that they were “observing a positive trend in service availability.”

CrowdStrike said it was “actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts.”

“This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed,” it wrote in a statement.

Arnold, the Toronto cybersecurity lawyer, said the outage is a startling reminder of how dependent companies in Canada and around the world have become on just a handful of operating systems.

“We have also become more vulnerable because of that concentration in just a few companies and a few pieces of vital technology,” he said.

“I think it’s probably going to be days or weeks before we understand the full impact.”

ORIGINAL STARPHOENIX ARTICLE