Banks across Texas were affected by a global tech outage Friday morning, with disrupted services and late-night efforts to restore access. While many banks were operational by business hours Friday, some continued to face disruptions.
The outage occurred when a faulty software update by Texas-based cybersecurity company CrowdStrike affected computers running Microsoft Windows.
Flights were grounded, media outlets went off air, hospitals canceled surgeries and banks went offline around the world early Friday as a result of the outage, which was not a security incident or cyberattack, according to CrowdStrike.
A spokesperson at Frost Bank, headquartered in San Antonio, said they were working to restore service as soon as possible, but were still seeing sporadic outages Friday morning.
“Our technicians have been working really overnight to get everything fixed … sometimes access is restored, sometimes it goes back out,” said Frost Bank communications manager Bill Day. “It’s been a process of chasing down the numerous systems that we use that are affected and making sure customers have access.”
By business hours on Friday morning, Texas Capital was operating business as usual.
McKinney-based Independent Financial was also not affected by the outage, a spokesperson said.
In a statement, Dallas-based Comerica, whose financial services has more than 400 branches in the U.S., said it was impacted by the outage.
“Our recovery actions overnight mitigated the impact to our customers,” the statement said. “Currently, all critical systems are healthy.”
Scott Kavanaugh, CEO of Texas-based regional bank First Foundation, said it had some problems due to the outage.
“Our teams have worked tirelessly since the outage to troubleshoot the issues and minimize the issues,” Kavanaugh wrote in an email. “It appears at this time, the biggest issues remaining are a delay in reporting. All other functions of the bank are operational at this time, although it appears some vendors remain impacted.”
According to Kavanaugh, customer accounts were not affected as of Friday morning.
Downdetector, a site that monitors online services, reported that users had problems at Bank of America, Charles Schwab, Capital One, Chase Bank, Wells Fargo and other financial institutions, beginning in the early hours of Friday morning.
Chase, Wells Fargo, Charles Schwab and Bank of America did not respond to requests for comment.
CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said Friday that the company issued a fix for the issue and would be rolling back its Falcon update, the cause of the outage. No customer data has been compromised, he said.
