Even though a worldwide IT malfunction knocked out most of Monadnock Community Hospital’s computers early Friday morning, hospital spokeswoman Alycia McDuff stated that the Peterborough facility was able to care for patients safely, and no procedures were canceled or delayed.

The outage was caused by CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity company based in Austin, Texas, used widely by businesses and government agencies, when one of its updates included a defect that caused the crash of Windows operating systems.

According to McDuff, hospital staff first noticed the issue around 1:50 a.m., when most of its computers were inaccessible. The outage affected the emergency department, medical/surgery and Birthing Suite, as well as the computers for the hospital’s main switchboard.

“Thanks to the swift action of our IT department, our electronic medical record systems were restored by 4:30 a.m., switchboard communication systems up by 6:30 a.m. and all clinical areas had access to functioning machines by 8 a.m.,” McDuff stated.

Outpatient clinics and emergency room waiting times were not affected, McDuff stated.

Peterborough warns of malicious activity

Peterborough Town Clerk Linda Guyette stated that Town Hall operations were not directly affected by the outages. However, she stated that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency did observe threat actors taking advantage of this incident for phishing and other malicious activity.

 “The Town of Peterborough’s IT Department asks town staff to remain vigilant and only follow instructions and fulfill requests from legitimate, verified sources,” she stated.

In 2021, cybercriminals stole $2.3 million from the town after breaking into a staff member’s email account. In response, the town instituted multi-factor authentication – which requires two or more pieces of evidence to ensure a user’s identity – for all Finance Department staff and department directors. 

Crash knocked 911 system offline

New Hampshire's 911 system went offline for about three hours Friday.

In a press release issued by the Division of Emergency Services and Communications, it was determined that the 911 outage was caused by the global outage of Windows systems. According to the release, just after 1 a.m. on Friday, 911 telecommunicators reported that although they were able to see incoming calls on their systems, they were unable to answer them.

During that outage, those calls were returned to ensure that callers were able to still communicate their needs and receive help.

"Backup processes were immediately implemented. As of 3:30 a.m., calls and texts to 911 (were) being received normally on the New Hampshire 911 backup system,” which remained fully operational, the press release stated.

At about 4 a.m., the 911 server system was restored, and calls and texts were processed normally.

Jesseca Timmons, Ashley Saari and Bill Fonda contributed to this story.