Friday turned into a technology nightmare for many people. The Texas Department of Public Safety Driver License Centers were turning people away.
“I had to miss work today and I had to call in like three or four times and we called them yesterday,” DPS customer Christopher Sandavol said. “They said to come today, and I scheduled everything, did plans, arrangements and it’s all, it’s all going bad.”
DPS said their closure was due to the global Microsoft outage and there is no estimate on when offices will reopen.
“I’m going to have to take another day off work,” Sandavol said. “That’s causing me to lose money, too.”
“My only concern now is how soon will I be able to get in to take it because I have to reschedule it now,” DPS customer Ronal Guion said who showed up to take a test.
Other businesses were also affected like family-owned Platinum Auto Glass in Lewisville.
Araceli Quezada was ready to start her day until she called the company that handles their billing and insurance processing and got a voicemail saying they were closed due to the emergency.
Platinum Auto Glass can still do its work in the shop, but office operations are impacted.
“So, billing and any statements any insurance, work orders, not able to do so you know, I can’t really do anything that way,” Quezada said.
We spoke with cyber security expert David Malicoat about the outage. He said work is happening in the background to get things back on track. As for consumers all you can do is wait.
“I think resilience is the key,” Malicoat said. “If we’re talking about, there’s a lot that can go on in the background that you don’t have a lot of control over and the outcome you don’t have a lot that you can do to be proactive about it, particularly like in this case, a whole bunch of systems are down. Let’s be patient.”
But when it comes to a business processing payments, patience doesn’t get you paid. “I’m hoping it will get results pretty quickly,” Quezada said.
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