Crowdstrike IT outage could cause $16 BILLION loss for company - a fifth of its entire value

Crowdstrike's IT outage that brought the world to a grinding halt could cause a $16 BILLION loss for the company - a fifth of its entire value.

The outage caused Microsoft systems to crash across the world, with everywhere from airports, banks and supermarket systems met with a blue screen. All United, Delta and American Airlines flights were grounded amid the chaos. Crowdstrike shares plummeted, losing a fifth of their value in trading in the US and was down 21% in unofficial trading, reports the Hindustan Times .

According the projections based of the fall in share value, this would result in a loss of almost $16 billion in the company's value. Microsoft has issued a statement on the issue. “Our services are still seeing continuous improvements while we continue to take mitigation actions,” Microsoft said on X this morning. “We still expect that users will continue to see gradual relief as we continue to mitigate the issue.”

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Crowdstrike has also issued a statement on the ongoing IT outage. CEO George Kurtz said on X: "CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack.

The outage was triggered by a bug in a cyber security update of Microsoft Windows. Security consultant Troy Hunt said: “I don’t think it’s too early to call it… This will be the largest IT outage in history.” Here is what you need to know. Businesses in Australia were the first to report issues, with retailers Woolworths and 7-Eleven among those hit. Sydney Airport flagged a “global technical outage”.

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Soon, firms and organisations around the world were being impacted too. The impact was particularly felt by airports in Europe. Yesterday was due to be the busiest day since late 2019.

CrowdStrike chief executive George Kurtz insists it was not a security incident or attack. But it might take a while to sort out. Although there is now a software fix, experts say putting it right may have to be done manually in many cases. Dr Vasileios Karagiannopoulos, associate professor in cyber-crime and cyber-security at the University of Portsmouth, warned that it could take days if not weeks.