An issue with the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. caused Microsoft Corp. systems all over the world to go down. This could be the biggest outage ever.
CrowdStrike’s stock CRWD, -11.10% dropped sharply on Friday after the outage. It had its worst day in more than 19 months.
Computers that were powered by Microsoft MSFT, -0.74% were affected by the huge outage. It messed up flights and hurt banks, publishers, and many other businesses around the world. The outages were blamed on CrowdStrike by both governments and airlines.
CrowdStrike’s stock fell 11.1% on Friday, the most in one day since November 30, 2022, when it fell 14.8%. It had dropped as much as 15.4% earlier in the day.
Troy Hunt, an expert in online security and the founder and CEO of Have I Been Pwned, a data-breach search and notification service, thinks that this outage is the worst in history.
The security expert wrote on X (formerly Twitter), “I don’t think it’s too early to call it: This will be the biggest IT outage in history.”
Shares of CrowdStrike fell on Friday, but shares of Palo Alto Networks Inc. PANW, +2.16% went up 2.2%.
“This is clearly a major black eye for CrowdStrike, and the stock will be under pressure after this global outage related to Microsoft caused a lot of trouble around the world,” said Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities.
Analysts at William Blair, led by Jonathan Ho, also used the “black eye” image. “Usually, CrowdStrike’s global reach is a big plus,” they said. “But as long as companies are working to fix the problem, only time will tell if this affects any future business opportunities.”
The problems were said to be caused by CrowdStrike’s Falcon Sensor platform.
In a post on social media, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said that the company has found the issue.
CrowdStrike is working with customers who were affected by a bug found in a single Windows host content update. “Mac AAPL, +0.06% and Linux hosts are not affected,” Kurtz said.
“This is not a cyberattack or security breach,” he said. “The problem has been located, and a fix has been put in place.”
Ho from William Blair wrote that companies might need some time to fix the CrowdStrike problem because the computers that are affected have started to restart from scratch all the time. He told clients in a note that this means “having to deal with each device individually without being able to remotely patch these systems due to the rebooting effect.”
Since the beginning of the year, CrowdStrike shares have dropped 19.2% and are down 19.4% so far this year. After being downgraded to sell by Redburn Atlantic, the stock fell 3.4% on Thursday.
“This could have serious effects on CrowdStrike’s business, especially as it tries to get more big businesses to use its services to fuel its next phase of growth,” Redburn analyst Nina Marques wrote in a Friday update. “Also, it could cause changes in market share as customers look for other security options.”
