CrowdStrike’s results released on Wednesday provide the first glimpse into the financial impact of the global cyber outage that took down Microsoft’s Windows operating system last month. Investors are keen to see what impact it has had on the cybersecurity company’s reputation and whether it has caused potential market share losses to rivals.
The July 19 outage was caused by a faulty CrowdStrike software update that disrupted internet services worldwide. Thousands of people were stranded at airports after mass flight cancellations and broadcasters were forced to cancel their broadcasts. Sectors such as banking and healthcare were also hit hard.
The incident affected nearly 8.5 million Windows devices, according to Microsoft, and resulted in several lawsuits against CrowdStrike, including one from Delta Air Lines.
“We are concerned that new customers will be impacted. Executives may want to take a closer look at why CrowdStrike is the right answer and why their choice will not cause future outages,” Bernstein analysts said in a note.
The outage may have impacted CrowdStrike’s ability to negotiate with customers on its terms and win new business, providing an opportunity for competitors to gain market share in the short term.
