Narrative:

My sector was very busy with complex traffic and high volume. I had many aircraft all in the same area and was trying to work through the tough session. My d-side was giving a relief briefing when he and the relieving controller realized that the slew ball and keyboard stopped working. This caused a lot of commotion and unwanted noise for me while I was trying to keep my traffic separated and I was unable to update routes and unable to get things coordinated in a timely manner with neighboring facilities and sectors. This caused a major hardship for me and I couldn't get help from my d-side. The erids (enroute information display system) locked up as well and it took several minutes before it was fixed. Someone from the soc (service operations center) came down and mentioned that the 'security function' button was accidentally pushed which caused the shutdown. This was a very serious and dangerous situation! It sounds like someone screwed up and caused many d-sides in the control room to stop working. Because my d-side was busy trying to figure out why the equipment wasn't working; he could not perform the duties that I needed immediately and caused me to get way behind almost having to get a tracker. This added exponentially to my work load and stress levels! Safety was compromised!someone needs to be reprimanded for making this mistake in the soc; if what I overheard is indeed true.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: ZID Controller reported losing the functionality of their D-side's keyboard. This lead to being overworked while the D-side had to figure out why the keyboard was not working. It was determined that someone had entered a security function that made the keyboards stop working.

Narrative: My sector was very busy with complex traffic and high volume. I had many aircraft all in the same area and was trying to work through the tough session. My D-side was giving a relief briefing when he and the relieving controller realized that the slew ball and keyboard stopped working. This caused a lot of commotion and unwanted noise for me while I was trying to keep my traffic separated and I was unable to update routes and unable to get things coordinated in a timely manner with neighboring facilities and sectors. This caused a major hardship for me and I couldn't get help from my D-side. The ERIDS (Enroute Information Display System) locked up as well and it took several minutes before it was fixed. Someone from the SOC (Service Operations Center) came down and mentioned that the 'security function' button was accidentally pushed which caused the shutdown. This was a very serious and dangerous situation! It sounds like someone screwed up and caused many D-sides in the control room to stop working. Because my D-side was busy trying to figure out why the equipment wasn't working; he could not perform the duties that I needed immediately and caused me to get way behind almost having to get a tracker. This added exponentially to my work load and stress levels! Safety was compromised!Someone needs to be reprimanded for making this mistake in the SOC; if what I overheard is indeed true.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.