GCU was not immune from a failed software update that caused about 8.5 million devices worldwide to display the blue screen of death on Thursday night.
Those affected included large companies and government agencies. The crash also led to more than 5,000 canceled flights, the shutdown of retail and commerce stores, and cities and counties playing catch-up on all-night calls as they tried to recover critical services, from 911 dispatchers to hospitals.
But thanks to the tremendous effort of multiple GCE IT teams and the patient cooperation of employees across the organization, all systems were back up and running Friday.
A group of employees from IT worked on restoring systems, starting when the issue occurred late Thursday, many working through the night to help bring GCU's most critical systems back online, GCE Education Chief Information Security Officer Mike Manrod said.
The 24x7 GCE Network Operations Center started the response within minutes of the issue occurring, quickly looping in operations, development and security experts. All worked collaboratively to get things up and running as quickly as possible. Starting early Friday morning, a cross-functional team of workers led by the IT Help Desk supported workers by phone and in person. This Herculean effort ended up manually recovering around 1,500 servers and laptops in one day, Manrod said.
“The technology we rely upon to deliver our educational products, as well as to navigate modern society, are built upon technological foundations that are complicated and interdependent,” Manrod said. “While we can never be assured a technology system will not have issues, by working together and setting the standard for how we respond to issues, we can recover rapidly and remain resilient to the various challenges that arrive. Our response to this challenge should make us all proud to be Lopes!!
“Lopes Up / Systems Up!!!”
