The News
US Fortune 500 companies, excluding Microsoft, are facing a $5.4 billion loss due to the world’s biggest IT outage, a cyber insurer estimated.
Within 90 minutes, a glitch in CrowdStrike’s security software update last week crashed millions of computers running on Microsoft Windows, disrupting hospitals, banks, and airports. The outage’s global financial cost could be $15 billion, insurer Parametrix told Reuters, and it could well be “the biggest accumulation event” in cyber insurance history.
CrowdStrike on Wednesday vowed to improve its internal testing and introduce staggered releases of future updates. One games developer predicted that governments should expect IT companies to notify them of updates since “there will probably be many more situations like this” as automated systems proliferate.