US terminals down

Barbours Cut and Bayport container terminals at Port Houston are down, but the port’s executive director stressed a cyber attack isn’t to blame.

On 27 July, Roger Guenther said there was a “major failure of the storage devices that support all of the applications used to operate” both terminals.

He said the applications and associated data were moved to a redundant set of storage devices. This action restored terminal operations, but these redundant storage devices also failed, leaving the terminals unable to process cargo.

“I want to be clear that this is not a cyber-attack on the Port Houston operating system,” Guenther said.

“The ships that were already in progress have been able to continue working, but new vessel starts have not been possible. The truck gates at both container facilities are also idle.”

Once the hardware has been fixed, plans include daily extended gate hours as well as weekend gates. Guenther said that “all available resources will be provided to continue vessel operations”.