UK ITS students and staff help remedy global outage at hospitals, clinics
It was all hands-on deck at UK HealthCare facilities as the massive CrowdStrike incident crippled computer systems globally on Friday, July 19. To fix the issues caused by the program, computers need to be manually restarted and then updated with code.
The job brought together IT employees from across the university. That included student employees throughout University of Kentucky Information Technology Services (UK ITS) who responded quickly and helped UK HealthCare resume routine care.
UK ITS Cybersecurity student workers Ayah Abdeldayem, James Wong and Logan Andrews assisted with reboots and recovery efforts at Albert B. Chandler hospital. Abdeldayem said she was happy to help.
“I was able to volunteer all day Monday, July 22, to help reboot machines in all the medical buildings into safe mode,” she said. “It was such a great and fun experience, knowing that I am helping with a bigger part of research, and continuing to help medical facilities. It was cool to know I was part of the team helping with the global CrowdStrike outage — an experience I will never forget.”
Cybersecurity student worker James Wong said the team went door to door at UK HealthCare to address issues with computers.
“Witnessing the extensive impact of the CrowdStrike update was surreal and underscored the critical role of cybersecurity and IT,” he said. “The experience was both exciting and rewarding, providing me with valuable hands-on learning as a Computer Science student. Contributing to the recovery efforts during this significant outage highlighted the importance of our work and the positive impact we can have on the community.”
Smart Campus employees Kirk Laird, Kevin Reifert and Daniel Huber along with students Ethan Thompson, Makayla Minor and Coby Richardson teamed up and worked to bring systems back online at various locations throughout the hospital and in a classroom.
“We’re glad that we could jump in and help during the outage,” Laird said. “Everyone worked together, and our team showed how awesome they are in a crisis.”
Smart Campus lead Erik Jarvis also worked with his students on the 9th and 11th floors at Chandler Hospital. Smart Campus workers included Hannah Sexton, Alex Valdivia, Nash Mead and Cadin Adams.
“Four of my students and I connected with the ITS team at the hospital around 8:30am on Friday and took on the task of fixing the downed computers,” Jarvis said. “The team worked through the afternoon, and I’m grateful that they were willing to help.”
Mark Hughes, an ITS manager, and his team also worked to remove the corrupted files to fix the computer systems in the hospital. Hughes said health care workers welcomed his team.
“They were not angry, they were not placing blame on us for not having access to records, labs, reports, pharmaceuticals and more.” Hughes said. “Even when we would find the occasional PC that would not recover on the first try, they were just appreciative that we tried.”
Hughes added his appreciation for his team, which includes Jared Stewart, Mary Lorraine Good, Mark Ferrito and Jonathan Ashurst from the GIS team as well as the UK HealthCare IT team: Grant Thomas, Bruce Byrom, Alex Clark, Todd Sharp, Ryan and many others who helped throughout the day.
“I witnessed an entire division of employees — many had never met before — working side by side to restore systems so that the Healthcare professionals could provide the high level of care patients receive from UK Healthcare,” Hughes said. “It made all of us proud to be a part of UK ITS.”
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