The Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA) released findings of a preliminary report on the cause of the intermittent outages within the Next-Generation 911 (NG911) system across the Commonwealth earlier this month. The preliminary root cause analysis found that the issues were due to a defect in an operating system, which resulted in intermittent disruptions to NG911 call delivery. The disruptions are not believed to be the result of a cyber-attack. “As soon as the intermittent outages started, our vendors and partner public safety organizations began to investigate the cause and take steps to resolve the issue,” said PEMA Executive Deputy Director Jeff Boyle. “We activated the Emergency Alert System and issued Wireless Emergency Alerts as a precautionary measure to notify everyone in Pennsylvania of the issue and to follow county-based back up plans should they not be able to reach the 911 centers by calling the traditional three-digit phone number.” Next Generation Core Services (NGCS) are the systems and components used to process and route calls from phones to 911 centers. There are four instances of the NGCS which are located at two data centers within the NG911 system in Pennsylvania. PEMA suggests as a part of your personal preparedness plan, save your county 911 center ten-digit non-emergency number on your cellphone or write it down in an easily accessible place if you have an emergency and for some reason cannot reach 911.