How LGH Weathered the CrowdStrike Storm

InFocus  •  Fall 2024 Issue  •  November 24, 2024  

On July 19, 2024, Penn Medicine was one of many systems and companies around the world impacted by the CrowdStrike Outage. CrowdStrike is an endpoint security vendor whose primary technology is the Falcon platform, which helps protect systems against potential threats in a bid to minimize cybersecurity risks. The July event might be considered the largest IT outage in history and was triggered by a faulty software update, affecting millions of Windows systems.

At Lancaster General Health, a variety of systems were affected, including Mobile Heartbeat (telephones used for internal communication), Electronic Medical Records, PennMed Aware (emergency notification system), remote pharmacy units, and connectivity between systems used for placing orders, receiving samples, and resulting laboratory tests. Tower-based computers were affected, but VDI computers were accessible. By having a mix of VDI and tower-based computers, LGH was able to continue operations without going into full downtime operations. 

The Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Departments across all Penn Medicine entities have been working collaboratively on Business Continuity Planning for the last year and also came together for an After-Action-Review of the CrowdStrike outage event as well. The detailed instructions and planning for an extended downtime has helped us all navigate the issues that arose from the CrowdStrike event. From sharing documents within our MediaLab document control system to developing plans to send specimens to sister hospital laboratories for testing – it has been a very proactive and positive experience. Planning for the continuation of services, or “business as usual,” has forced the laboratories to look at every detail possible from testing, operations, supply chain management, staffing, tracking of quality concerns and corrective actions, reporting proficiency testing, and patient reportable results to the DOH. 

While we hope to never experience an event of this magnitude again, our planning has made us more prepared to weather any storm that comes our way.