Microsoft Outage: Major Outage Could Cost CrowdStrike a Lot

The Microsoft Windows operating system failure affected about eight and a half million devices in July, making it the world's worst IT outage to date. It affected hospitals, air and city transportation, and electronic payment systems.

It is believed that the CrowdStrike product was partially responsible for the global outage, or more precisely, its update, which contained a bug. Responsibility for the outage was also taken by the highest representatives of the company. “The cause of the outage was a bug in the update of CrowdStrike's Falcon program on devices using the Windows operating system,” the company's CEO George Kurtz said in a statement shortly after the disruption occurred.

Read also: This company is behind the global outage. What is CrowdStrike?

Now, in a lawsuit, shareholders accuse the company of providing “false and misleading” information about software update testing. They also point out that in just 12 days, the company’s stock price fell 32%, causing a loss of $25 billion in market value.

The amount of compensation that the plaintiffs will seek in court has not been specified. The joint lawsuit was joined by shareholders who held shares in the company from November 29 to July 29.

During a conference call with shareholders, CEO George Kurtz reportedly insisted that CrowdStrike's software is “proven, tested and certified.”

That same year, the company announced that all the consequences of the failure had been resolved. This happened only ten days after the incident began.

In a statement sent to the BBC, CrowdStrike stressed that it disagrees with the plaintiffs' allegations. “We believe this case is without merit and we will defend the company,” a company spokesman wrote.

A day earlier, Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian told CNBC that disruptions caused by the outage had cost the airline $500 million, including lost revenue and passenger compensation.

As the BBC writes, Delta is also preparing to seek compensation from CrowdStrike.