TECHNOLOGY
CrowdStrike plummets in stock market over Microsoft outage: how much have shares fallen?
Fingers are pointing at CrowdStrike, an American cyber security firm, as the cause of the widespread outages affecting companies using Microsoft systems.
CrowdStrike, the American cybersecurity firm whose software is being widely reported as the cause of a major Microsoft outage, is thought to be facing a trying day ahead on the US stock market.
How has Microsoft outage affected CrowdStrike shares?
Indeed, MarketWatch expert Steve Goldstein says CrowdStrike “may be looking at [its] worst single-day stock-market performance ever”. Goldstein notes that in a premarket trade today, Friday July 19, the value of CrowdStrike’s stock dropped by 20%.
Trading opens on the New York Stock Exchange at 9:30 a.m. ET/6:30 a.m. PT.
CrowdStrike blamed for global outage
Worldwide, companies including airlines, banks and media outlets have suffered severe disruptions to business today, amid technical issues affecting computers using Microsoft’s Windows operating system.
American Airlines has told the BBC that IT problems are down to a “technical issue with CrowdStrike that is impacting multiple carriers”. The Swiss Federal Office for Cyber Security has also publicly pointed the finger at CrowdStrike, telling the news agency Reuters that a faulty update or misconfiguration by the company is behind the disruption.
Falcon platform identified as cause
The tech-news outlet The Register has shared a post by an X user that apparently shows a CrowdStrike advisory warning of an issue with its Falcon software. “CrowdStrike is aware of reports of crashes on Windows hosts related to the Falcon Sensor,” says the advisory. “Our engineering teams are actively working to resolve this issue”.
According to Times Now News, a CrowdStrike representative said on the company’s message forum: “We’re aware of a widespread issue causing BSOD [blue screen of death] errors on Windows machines across various sensor versions.”
Who are CrowdStrike?
CrowdStrike, a Texas-based firm founded in 2011, describes itself as “a global cybersecurity leader with an advanced cloud-native platform for protecting endpoints, cloud workloads, identities and data”.
The company’s Falcon technology is an antivirus platform that is designed to protect organisations’ IT systems from cyber attacks.
The software “leverages real-time indicators of attack, threat intelligence, evolving adversary tradecraft, and enriched telemetry from across the enterprise to deliver hyper-accurate detections, automated protection, and remediation”, CrowdStrike says.