Being the cause of a global tech outage is a pretty serious crisis, one that demands a robust response. When it happened to CrowdStrike last week, the cybersecurity company reacted quickly and forcefully — at least operationally. Its communications about the disaster haven’t quite risen to the occasion.

On Friday, July 19, Austin, Texas-based CrowdStrike released an update to its Falcon Sensor vulnerability scanner. Glitches in the update caused about 8.5 million Microsoft Windows devices across the planet to shut down — to even display the dreaded blue screen of death. Airlines had to cancel flights, with ensuing airport chaos. Banking systems went out. More worrying, health-care networks and 911 emergency call centers were inoperable.

CrowdStrike, which seemed to learn of the issue in the wee hours of July 19, released a fix the same day, but some computers were unable to access the patch or to otherwise right themselves. Problems lingered.

‘Valued Customers’

The company smartly put up a web page with mostly technical information on how to get systems back on track. The page and the company’s blog include a 281-word statement, released 2:30 p.m. Austin time Friday, from CEO George Kurtz to “valued customers and partners.”

Kurtz apologized (perfunctorily), briefly explained the cause and the fix and promised that CrowdStrike was working with customers to restore systems. “This was not a cyberattack,” he declared.

One good aspect of Kurtz’s message was his caution to customers to be on the lookout for scams related to the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” he wrote. Indeed, web pages reportedly immediately appeared offering quick solutions that were in reality links to malware.

‘Full Transparency’

Kurtz’s statement was overly reserved and too corporate and didn’t really acknowledge the severity of the problem. “Nothing is more important to me than the trust and confidence that our customers and partners have put into CrowdStrike,” the last paragraph reads. “As we resolve this incident, you have my commitment to provide full transparency on how this occurred and steps we’re taking to prevent anything like this from happening again.”

Shawn Henry, CrowdStrike’s chief security officer (and a former FBI agent), wrote a LinkedIn post Sunday that was, frankly, too self-absorbed, but also had some more pungent language (and mixed metaphors) than Kurtz’s. “The confidence we built in drips over the years was lost in buckets within hours, and it was a gut punch,” he wrote.

And now the company is reportedly receiving backlash for offering customers $10 UberEats vouchers as an apology. Sheesh.

Delta Air

Perhaps no CrowdStrike customer has had a rougher time of it than Delta Air Lines. Half of the more than 7,000 U.S. flights canceled from Friday through Sunday were reportedly Delta flights. The airline was still canceling away on Tuesday.

“The technology issue occurred on the busiest travel weekend of the summer, with our booked loads exceeding 90 percent, limiting our reaccommodation capabilities,” Delta CEO Ed Bastian said in his own statement Sunday. “I want to apologize to every one of you who have been impacted by these events.”

Bastian issued another statement yesterday morning offering “Delta SkyMiles and travel vouchers as a further gesture of apology.”

Photo Credit: rafapress/Shutterstock

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