Norfolk Southern Blames Outage on Vendor Software

By Dean Seal

Norfolk Southern is attributing a recent system outage to a defect in the software of a vendor that performs maintenance on its data-storage system.

The railroad operator said it has finished a root-cause analysis of Monday's outage and found no indication that it was related to an unauthorized cybersecurity incident.

During a routine maintenance procedure performed by a vendor, the vendor's software created an error that caused the company's primary and recovery data-storage systems to become unresponsive, which then affected its core operational systems. Norfolk Southern didn't name the vendor but described it as a "leading global technology provider."

"We are working closely with the vendor to understand the steps they are taking to strengthen their systems to prevent this incident from reoccurring and identify opportunities for Norfolk Southern to become more resilient," the company said.

Norfolk Southern is making progress on the temporary backlog of trains caused by the incident and expects network fluidity to fully recover in the coming weeks.

Write to Dean Seal at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 01, 2023 09:43 ET (13:43 GMT)

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