Cities across Kitsap County in the days following a global tech outage caused by an errant software update have reported that local government functions remained relatively unaffected and a majority of third-party systems were only affected across a short period of time.

Global users of cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike are still cleaning up the wreckage from what some experts are calling the largest IT outage in history. Banks, hospitals, retailers and selected airlines were among those forced offline, Windows users around the world finding themselves met with the informally titled “Blue Screen of Death.”

CrowdStrike said in preliminary reports that a bug in its cloud-based testing system allowed software “containing problematic content data” to be pushed out to users July 19. Reports as of July 26 indicate that while the large majority of systems are back online, companies such as Delta Air Lines were left in worse condition than others.

Meanwhile, reports from inside Kitsap indicate that its city governments appeared to evade the worst of the chaos. Poulsbo Mayor Becky Erickson, Bremerton Mayor Greg Wheeler and Port Orchard Mayor Rob Putaansuu all provided statements saying their cities do not directly utilize CrowdStrike, effectively minimizing any impacts.

Erickson said, “For the city, the outage wasn’t as urgent as was reported by other organizations. Our IT team is very cautious about software products we select and how they are used in the city. Security and reliability are key.”

All three cities did report impacts to select third-party systems, though most were resolved the day the outage began. Wheeler reported that Bremerton had issues with its Department of Community Development permitting portal, and city engineers briefly lost access to the full functionality of their PDF and project software Bluebeam. Putaansuu said selected vendors providing cloud-based services to Port Orchard such as online permitting and building inspection services were also affected.

The short-term solution for the South Kitsap city prior to those services’ online restoration: back to good old pen and paper.

“While the systems were down, (we) reverted back to paper processes, and in most cases, we were able to resume normal operations by the afternoon on Friday,” he said.

Public transportation was also quick to resume normal operations the day of the outage. Kitsap Transit told riders that several of its systems were impacted throughout the early hours of July 19 including ACCESS scheduling software, but affected services were back online in a matter of hours.

Emergency services from Kitsap 911 were reportedly unaffected by the outage.