CrowdStrike's IT outage to cost Fortune 500 companies over $5B
What's the story
A recent global IT outage, triggered by a faulty update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, is projected to cost US Fortune 500 companies a staggering $5.4 billion, insurers have estimated.
This figure does not include the losses incurred by Microsoft, which experienced widespread system failures during the crash.
The sectors predicted to bear the brunt of this fallout are airlines, banking and healthcare.
Global impact
Outage causes widespread disruptions, grounds thousands of flights
Described by experts as the largest IT failure in history, the outage grounded thousands of flights, disrupted hospital operations, and crashed payment systems.
The incident underscores the fragile nature of modern tech systems where a single faulty code in an update can trigger global repercussions.
Insured losses for non-Microsoft Fortune 500 companies could potentially reach between $540 million and $1.08 billion due to this unprecedented disruption.
Stock fluctuation
CrowdStrike's market value plummets following outage
CrowdStrike, a Texas-based company valued at around $83 billion before the outage, has seen about 22% of its stock market value evaporate since the incident.
The company has issued multiple apologies for causing the international tech crisis and released a report detailing what went wrong in the update.
The primary cause was identified as a bug in an update pushed to its flagship Falcon platform, which caused nearly 8.5 million Windows machines to crash on a single day.
Mitigation steps
Measures to prevent future outages
In response to the incident, CrowdStrike has announced plans to increase software testing before issuing updates in the future.
The company will also roll out updates gradually to prevent widespread simultaneous failures.
A more detailed report on the causes of the outage is expected in the coming weeks.
US House leaders have called on CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz to testify about the company's role in sparking the widespread tech outage.