"Definitely not the award to be proud of receiving," Sentonas told delegates in his acceptance speech. "I think the team was surprised when I said straight away that I'd come and get it because we got this horribly wrong. We've said that a number of different times and it's super important to own it when you do things well. It's super important to own it when you do things horribly wrong, which we did in this case."
But beyond this astute PR move, the legacy of the CrowdStrike incident is deadly serious. On 19 July, the world experienced one of the biggest ever IT outages when a faulty software update to Crowdstrike's vulnerability scanner, Falcon Sensor, led 8.5 million systems running Microsoft Windows to crash. Globally, IT infrastructure malfunctioned, creating havoc and financial loss for individuals and organisations.
The most serious such event since the NotPetya cyberattack in 2022, its impact was enormous: the faulty update caused global computer outages that disrupted air travel, banking, broadcasting, hotels, hospitals and other vital services. Insured losses are estimated to be more than $10 billion; actual losses may be far greater with the absence of cover affecting thousands of SME businesses.
Central to determining where liability rests will be the question of foreseeability. Numerous individuals would have known that this software was critical for interconnected and dependent organisations worldwide, and that they would be seriously affected by a faulty update. It is therefore self-evident that vendors should have adequate procedures.
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