The U.S. Virgin Islands has released a new consent form required for criminal record checks. Effective immediately, please begin using the new form that is available for your use here. Thank you for your continued trust in Sterling.
On Friday night, December 10, 2021, severe tornadoes hit six U.S. states, impacting Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee. Criminal and civil searches with external dependencies may experience delays across some counties in these states. The following county courts are currently experiencing closures: Graves, Marshall, and Warren Counties in Kentucky and Henderson County, Tennessee. Verifications with external dependencies may also experience delays. We are anticipating drug and health testing to also be impacted in some areas; Labcorp, Quest, and Vault Health are initially reporting no significant impact. eScreen reports some service disruption at their clinics in the impacted areas. It is recommended you contact testing sites in impacted areas to confirm hours of operation before visiting. Additionally, the severe weather has impacted specimen transit times due to flight delays. As a result of the tornadoes, please expect turnaround time delays for criminal searches, verifications, and drug and health testing.
We are closely monitoring the situation and will provide updates as they become available.
A widespread third-party cloud service provider outage caused Sterling system and service issues from 10:38 a.m. ET to 7:35 p.m. ET on Tuesday, December 7, 2021. While the underlying third-party cloud service provider outage has been resolved, you (and your candidates) may continue to experience intermittent delays as our services recover.
Based on the assessment to date, the following Sterling impact is described below:
Thank you for your patience.
In observance of upcoming holidays – Christmas and New Year’s Day – most U.S. courthouses, schools in session, and businesses will be closed. Since the holidays fall on the weekend, generally Christmas closures will occur on Friday, December 24, 2021 and New Year’s closures will occur Friday, December 31, 2021.
As a result, criminal searches and verifications with external dependencies are expected to be delayed by 24 to 48 hours following each holiday. Education verifications may be delayed up to two weeks due to school closures. Additionally, Patient Service Centers (PSC) for Quest/Labcorp, as well as their regional laboratories will have reduced operating hours on December 24 and 31, 2021, and will be closed in observance of the Christmas holiday on Saturday, December 25, 2021 and closed for the New Year’s holiday on Saturday, January 1, 2022. They will reopen on the Monday following the holiday. eScreen managed collection sites availability will vary. For all testing locations, we recommend that candidates and employees should reach out to the site prior to testing to confirm holiday hours of operation. For reference, here‘s a list of 2021 holidays. Thank you for your continued trust in Sterling.
A widespread third-party cloud service provider outage caused Sterling system and service issues from 10:38 a.m. ET to 7:30 p.m. ET on Tuesday, December 7, 2021. Please note the provider outage is now fully resolved.
While the underlying provider issue has been resolved, you may continue to experience intermittent delays for several hours as Sterling services recover. Sterling teams are assessing impact across our services and are taking action to mitigate this impact with urgency. We will continue to monitor the situation, and will share updates as they becomes available.
Thank you for your patience.
As of 6:45 p.m. ET, Sterling clients and candidates continue to experience intermittent system and service issues due to a prolonged, widespread third-party cloud service provider outage that started at 10:38 a.m. ET on December 7, 2021. The situation is improving but some U.S. and Canadian Sterling clients and candidates are experiencing intermittent login issues and error messages.
We remain in constant communication with our cloud service provider. While the underlying issue is improving, it’s not resolved. Once the provider issue is fully resolved, you can expect to experience intermittent delays as Sterling services recover. Sterling Technology teams will take actions to mitigate impact to our services with urgency. We will continue to monitor the situation, and will share updates and service impact as it becomes available.