Internet outage strikes at Pentagon, other facilities
'Technical issues' tripped up Internet access at the Pentagon and other DISA facilities on March 1.
The Defense Information Systems Agency on March 1 suffered an Internet outage that affected users at the Pentagon and in other facilities both in and outside of the Washington, DC metro area.
“An outage occurred Thursday morning impacting some users on DOD networks within the National Capital Region and in the Midwest. The outage lasted for approximately three hours and was not caused by any malicious activity. The networks are back up and operating at normal capacity,” a DISA public affairs spokesperson told Federal Computer Week in an e-mail.
A Washington, DC Fox News affiliate, citing an internal DISA memo, reported the outage also took out Blackberry service.
“Users are experiencing problems browsing the internet due to a DISA-wide outage… ALL Blackberry, email web-browsing, and VPN services are affected,” the memo read, according to the Fox report.
Fox also reported that users downrange and at combatant commands experienced outages, but DISA public affairs officials said that is not the case.
“Downrange operations and combatant commands were not affected,” a DISA spokesperson said. DISA additionally reiterated the outage was not the result of any kind of cyber attack.