Emergency 911 systems were down for more than an hour on Monday in cities and towns in 14 U.S. states. The downturn led many news organizations to speculate that the issue was related MicrosoftS Azure Web services platform, which struggled with widespread downtime at the time. However, several sources suggest that the 911 issues related to GripsonSecurity may involve some form of technical snap. Inside And Lumen, The two companies that handle 911 calls, make calls across the United States.
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Several news reports have suggested that the crash may be related to an ongoing service disruption at Microsoft. But a spokesman for the software company, GrepsonSecurity, said: “We do not see any indication that the multi-state 911 crash was the result of yesterday’s Azure service disruption.”
Investigations with emergency dispatch centers in several cities and towns affected by the 911 crash pointed to a different source: Omaha, NEP-based intro – known until last year Western Security Contacts – Provider of 911 and emergency telecommunications infrastructure, systems and services to telecommunications companies and public security companies across the country.
Intrado did not respond to several requests for comment. But Intrado said the crash was the result of an unspecified service provider issue, according to officials in Henderson County, NC, who suffered its own 911 failures yesterday.
“On September 28, 2020, at 4:30 pm, MD, our 911 service provider observed the internal conditions of their network, resulting in vulnerabilities to the 911 call distribution,” the report reads to intro district officials. “The vulnerability has been reduced, and service has been restored and confirmed to be operational by 5:47 PM MT. Our service provider is currently working to determine the root cause.”
There seems to be a service provider mentioned in Intrado’s report Lumen, A communications company and 911 provider were known until very recently Centurion Inc.. A view of the company Status page Indicates that many lumen systems experienced total or partial service disruptions on Monday Personal And Internal cloud networks And its Control systems network.
In a statement to Crippsonsecurity, Lumen blamed the issue on intrado.
“At approximately 4:30 pm MT, some lumen customers were affected by a vendor partner event that affected 911 services on AZ, CO, NC, ND, MN, SD and UT,” the report said. “Service was restored within an hour, and 911 traffic was still functioning properly at this time. The seller partner is in the process of investigating the incident.”
It is no coincidence that these two companies are now operating under new names, as this is not the first time the issue between the two has disrupted 911 access for a large number of Americans.
In 2019, Intrado / West and Centuriling agreed to pay 75,575,000 Federal Communications Commission In (FCC) An August 2018 crash It lasted 65 minutes. The FCC found that the incident occurred as a result of a configuration change in the 911 routing network of a Western security technician.
On April 6, 2014, about 11 million people across the United States were disconnected from 911 services for eight hours due to a “completely preventable” software bug tied to Intrado’s systems. The incident affected 81 call centers, and emergency services were unable to operate in Washington and some parts of North Carolina, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, California, Minnesota and Florida.
According to A 2014 Washington Post story Subsequent investigation and Report According to the FCC, the problem is that Intrado’s automation system sends a unique identification code for each incoming call to the appropriate “public security response point” or BSAP.
“As of April 9, the software responsible for assigning codes to a predetermined range,” the Post explained. “The counter actually stopped counting 40 million calls. As a result, the routing system stopped accepting new calls, leading to an interruption and a series of layer failures elsewhere in the 911 infrastructure. ”
Consolidating the length of the 2014 crash, the FCC found that the Intrado server responsible for classifying and monitoring service interruptions classified them as “low-level” incidents that were never flagged for manual review by humans.
The FCC eventually fined Intrado and Centurion 4 17.4 million for multiple state 2014 failures. An FCC spokesman declined to comment on Monday, but said the company was investigating the incident.
Tags: 911 malfunction, Azure, Centurioning, F.C.C., Federal Communications Commission, Inside, Microsoft, Washington Post, Western Corporation
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