Some East Texas stores, offices affected by global internet outage

Published 11:01 am Friday, July 19, 2024

Editor’s Note: This story will be updated as more outages are reported — and restored — locally.

Some East Texas businesses say they are affected by a global technology outage.

The outage was caused by a faulty software update, according to the Associated Press. It grounded flights, knocked banks and media outlets offline, and disrupted hospitals, small businesses and other services on Friday, “highlighting the fragility of a digitized world dependent on just a handful of providers,” the AP reported.

In East Texas, some Brookshire’s grocery stores have been impacted by the global IT issue and are temporarily closed.

“Our IT team is quickly working to resolve the technical issues at the impacted stores. We are hopeful that all stores will reopen soon, once the issues have been resolved,” according to a Brookshire Grocery Co. statement. “Our team has already been able to resolve several stores’ connections this morning so far.”

Many Brookshire’s locations have re-opened as it IT team continues to resolve the technical issues at the remaining closed stores. 

“Of the few remaining closures, BGC anticipates all locations to re-open in the next few hours,” according to BGC statement. “We regret the inconvenience this has caused out customers and are thankful for their patience and understanding.” 

Additionally, the Texas Department of Public Safety posted on X that Driver License Offices across the state are currently closed due to a “technical issue.” Customers with appointments should have already been notified. IT teams are working on a fix, however there is no current estimate on when DLOs will reopen, DPS said. DPS has multiple offices in East Texas.

The Smith County Tax Office in Tyler and substations in Lindale and Noonday remain open Friday but cannot process auto registrations because the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles system is down. The property tax department is working as usual, according to a Smith County Facebook post.

Representatives of Christus Trinity Mother Frances Health and UT Health Tyler confirmed that neither hospital nor its facilities are impacted by the internet outages.

The City of Tyler and the Tyler Pounds Regional Airport were not impacted, according to Andy Erbaugh, public information officer for Tyler Police Department.

The trouble with the update issued by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike and affecting computers running Microsoft Windows was not a hacking incident or cyberattack, according to CrowdStrike, which apologized and said a fix was on the way.

But hours later, the disruptions continued — and escalated.