CrowdStrike chief executive officer George Kurtz said this company turned last year’s crisis into an opportunity.
The update, which was released by the mentioned cybersecurity firm based in Austin, Texas, last summer, caused Windows computers and servers to be outaged worldwide. This incident had significant consequences for the company, including in the context of the financial aspect of its activities. However, the firm was able to cope with the crisis and the negative circumstances generated by it. In particular, CrowdStrike has recovered the $30 billion in market value. After the summer incident, this indicator turned out to be on a downward trajectory.
Currently, the value of CrowdStrike shares is at a level higher than the reading seen before the summer outage. At the same time, it is worth noting that within two weeks of the mentioned incident, the company’s securities fell in price by more than a third.
George Kurtz, during a conversation with media representatives, said that the company he heads has recovered, turning the crisis into a competitive advantage. He also noted that the summer incident did not have a downward impact on customer confidence. George Kurtz stated that clients are staying with the company. According to him, one of the customers said that broken bones heal stronger and they don’t expect this to reoccur. George Kurtz also stated that from the standpoint of competitors who have not encountered such an outage, the risk is probably higher.
CrowdStrike has a reputation as the first line of defense against cyber threats for many high-profile companies. This circumstance, which is what can be called a functioning fact of practical reality, has become a factor in exacerbating the scale and consequences of the outage that occurred in July.
Insurers predict that the summer incident could cause losses of several billion dollars. At the same time, CrowdStrike slightly lowered its guidance for the fourth quarter, and the relative optimism about the mentioned prospects is because in the quarter when the outage occurred, the customer retention rate was 97%. This is a good indicator in the context of a large-scale incident.
At the same time, the mentioned customer retention rate does not mean that clients are satisfied with CrowdStrike following the outage. Delta Air Lines, which had grounded 7,000 flights due to the incident, sued the company, headed by George Kurtz, in October. The airline, which faced losses of $500 million, is seeking monetary compensation.
A CrowdStrike spokesperson, while talking to media representatives, stated that Delta Air Lines’ claims are based on disproven misinformation, demonstrate a lack of understanding of how modern cybersecurity works, and reflect an attempt to shift the blame for the slow recovery from the failure to update outdated IT infrastructure.
The summer outage is a reminder of the relevance of cybersecurity issues. In this case, the incident occurred due to a glitch, but in the digital dimension of reality, examples of intentional exposure in virtual space continue to be recorded. For example, against the background of the active development of technologies, in particular artificial intelligence, the activities of fraudsters have become more sophisticated. Personal awareness of users is important to counteract the relevant threat in the cyber environment. For example, an Internet search query such as how to know if my camera is hacked will allow anyone to get information about signs of unauthorized access to the device. It is worth noting that digital literacy is an effective tool in combating cybercrime.
Over the past year, several damaging breaches have been recorded in the virtual space. One of the most high-profile cases was the Change Healthcare ransomware attack, which caused several billion dollars in losses, and the Snowflake data breach, which affected more than 160 of the world’s largest companies.
Some experts currently insist that in the context of the present conditions and circumstances shaping the overall state of affairs in the cyber environment, organizations and individuals should begin to perceive the issue of virtual security as an unambiguous priority, having something like the status of a strategic imperative. To ensure digital protection in the reality of the mentioned environment, which will be observed in 2025, it is important to combine three factors, including technology, education, and preparedness. To solve the specified problem, companies should consider taking measures such as implementing zero-trust architectures, performing regular penetration testing, and deploying advanced endpoint detection and response (EDR) systems to reduce vulnerabilities.
It is worth noting that any large-scale environment in which various less and more complex processes are carried out is characterized by risks associated with the likelihood of failures. Negative situations can be an accident, the result of an unfavorable combination of circumstances at a certain point in time, or the consequence of deliberate actions aimed at implementing destructive scenarios. Minimizing both the unfavorable likelihood and potential damage is a very important task. It is possible that over time, artificial intelligence will be able to form an uninterrupted and virtually ideal global environment in terms of the quality of functioning, or separate segments of such planes for the implementation of certain acts of the being, including in the digital dimension. At the same time, this is just an assumption, and reality continues to be subject to risks and negative probabilities.
