CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz has stated that 97 percent of affected machines are now back online from what cyber security experts claim is the largest IT outage in history. An event of such proportions definitely means that there would be some mammoth monetary damages behind it, and according to the latest estimates, a cyber insurance firm believes that several companies have accumulated losses of more than $5 billion.
The total cost of $5.4 billion only includes the outage for the Fortune 500 companies; CrowdStrike CEO has yet to provide updates on actual damages
Out of the Fortune 500, CrowdStrike has stated that it works with 298 of them, but Axios provides some interesting tidbits in the latest report. The software and IT-related businesses suffered the least, according to cyber security insurance firm Parametrix, and only accounted for 21 percent of all outages. This is because most software companies run on Linux, which remained unaffected by the buggy software update that brought the majority of systems to their knees.
However, if we look at the bigger picture, the affected companies lost an estimated $43.6 million each and it included all Fortune 500 airlines and approximately 75 percent of the top healthcare organizations. The total insured losses across the Fortune 500 fell in between the $540 million and $1.08 billion range, with the healthcare sector accumulating the biggest hit of roughly $1.9 billion. As for the airlines, they garnered losses of an estimated $860 million.
CrowdStrike’s attempt to appease the masses and the affected individuals needs to be recorded in a playbook, as it can provide a study of what practices should be completely avoided if such an event happens again. The company offered an insulting $10 Uber Eats voucher to its clients, which is not even a drop in a bucket compared to what transpired earlier. The Texas-based firm only accounts for 15 percent of the market share for security software in 2023, but much of that is concentrated on the Fortune 500.
In short, we can see the majority of these high-revenue companies re-evaluating their software providers in the future, even though CrowdStrike’s CEO has reiterated to every customer that the company will not rest until there is a 100 percent recovery.
News Source: Axios
Cyber Insurance Firm Believes That The CrowdStrike Outage Was The Largest In IT History, And Is Estimated To Have Cost Other Companies Over $5 Billion In Losses
