Emergency 911 services in 14 states went down temporarily on Monday, putting lives at risk. Some argue that the outages, which lasted for up to an hour, were caused by technical issues at Microsoft, which provides communications products used by emergency service departments. Others believe that the shutdown was caused by an issue with an emergency telephone service called Intrado.
According to a report by ZDNet, emergency services in 14 states experienced a short outage on Monday. The outages, which lasted between 30 and 60 minutes, occurred in Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Washington.
“ATTENTION: The 911 lines are not operational nationwide,” a tweet from the Minneapolis Police read. “This is for phone calls and text messaging. If you need police, fire or emergency medical assistance in Minneapolis, please call 612-348-2345. We will advise when this issue is fixed.”
ATTENTION: The 911 lines are not operational nationwide. This is for phone calls and text messaging. If you need police, fire or emergency medical assistance in Minneapolis, please call 612-348-2345. We will advise when this issue is fixed.
— Minneapolis Police (@MinneapolisPD) September 28, 2020
Some have theorized that the outage was caused by technical issues at Microsoft. On Monday, Microsoft experienced widespread issues across its 365 platform. City officials in Redmond, Washington, claimed Microsoft’s outages temporarily shut down their phone lines and emails.
Others believe that the outage was caused by an emergency telephone service called Intrado, which also experienced technical issues on Monday. “Expanding on this, it appears a VOIP PSAP service called Intrado appears to be having some issues that are affecting PSAPs in several states,” one person tweeted.
Expanding on this, it appears a VOIP PSAP service called Intrado @IntradoSafety appears to be having some issues that are affecting PSAPs in several states. https://t.co/3g1dDPjRAl
— Battle Programmer Yuu @ Bed (@netspooky) September 29, 2020
Others have suggested that the outages were caused by hackers. Breitbart News reported this week that a large hospital system with over 400 locations experienced a cyberattack this week. Cybersecurity analysts believe that it may be the largest cyberattack on a hospital system in the nation’s history.
Stay tuned to Breitbart News for more updates on this story.
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