CrowdStrike is facing criticism after offering a $10 UberEats voucher to apologize for a global IT outage that disrupted operations across airlines, banks, and hospitals.
The outage, caused by a faulty software update, affected 8.5 million computers worldwide. The company’s attempt at an apology was seen as insufficient or even insulting by many. A Reddit user posted that this was an “absolute clown show” while another said: “I literally wanted to drive my car off a bridge this weekend and they bought me coffee. Nice.”
If possible, the situation got worse as many postings indicated that the $10 cards were not working. Apparently, Uber was swamped by the volume of redemptions and blocked the cards, presumably thinking that these cards might be fraudulent.
But the situation has inadvertently raised questions about what financial compensation CrowdStrike will offer to affected customers.
The cybersecurity firm has pledged to enhance its software testing to prevent similar incidents in the future. CrowdStrike’s CEO, George Kurtz, issued a public apology and acknowledged the impact of the outage, which led to chaos in multiple sectors, including the cancellation of thousands of flights and significant disruptions in banking and healthcare services. But it is unlikely that they company will offer any financial compensation and there are presumably limitations in the customer agreement that would restrict the maximum damages to the the amount of fees paid by the client. Without these types of limitations, no security vendor would be able to offer services or products as a the cost of even a single breach could be an astonishing amount. Some estimates of the amount of damage in this case extend into the billions of dollars.
The US government is also scrutinizing CrowdStrike’s handling of the situation, with Congress calling Kurtz to testify about the incident. The House Committee on Homeland Security emphasized the national security risks associated with network dependency and is pushing for more information on how the company plans to address these vulnerabilities. This incident underscores the need for robust cybersecurity measures and the potential repercussions of widespread IT failures.
