Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.CrowdStrike, the cyber security company behind the botched update that took down millions of Windows PCs and servers in July,\u00a0has more than recovered the $30bn in market value it shed in the wake of the crisis.The company\u2019s shares, which plunged by more than a third in the two weeks after the incident, are now worth more than they were on the day before what US House Homeland Security Committee chair Mark Green called the \u201clargest IT outage in history\u201d.CrowdStrike chief executive George Kurtz told the Financial Times the company had bounced back by turning the crisis into \u201ca competitive advantage\u201d.\u00a0He said the incident \u2014 which stranded airline passengers, interrupted hospital appointments and took broadcasters off air around the globe \u2014 had not dented customers\u2019 trust.\u201cCustomers are staying with us,\u201d Kurtz said in an interview after the company\u2019s latest earnings report. \u201cWe had one customer say that broken bones heal stronger and they don\u2019t expect this to reoccur. Conversely, from a competitor standpoint, that hasn\u2019t gone through something like this, there\u2019s probably more risk.\u201dThe Texas-based company had a reputation for being many major companies\u2019 first line of defence against cyber attacks. The high-profile nature of these customers exacerbated the scale of the disruption when a routine update to CrowdStrike\u2019s flagship Falcon security software triggered a \u201cblue screen of death\u201d error on 8.5mn Windows devices on July 19. But although insurers have estimated that total losses from the outages could run into billions of dollars, CrowdStrike has only marginally pared back its guidance for the fourth quarter and reported a 97 per cent customer retention rate in the three months to September.The company also beat analysts\u2019 earnings expectations for the quarter, reporting $1bn in revenues for the three months to September, up 29 per cent from the same period in 2023.Analysts have credited CrowdStrike\u2019s recovery to its handling of the outage. Despite initial criticism of Kurtz\u2019s first statement, which did not include an immediate apology, communications from CrowdStrike were, on the whole, \u201ca masterclass in terms of owning up to the incident\u201d, according to Fatima Boolani, an analyst at Citi. But not all customers are satisfied. Delta Air Lines, which cancelled thousands of flights due to the outages, is seeking damages from CrowdStrike after estimating that the impact has cost more than $500mn. In a lawsuit filed in October in Georgia, the Atlanta-based carrier said CrowdStrike had caused a \u201cglobal catastrophe\u201d because it \u201ccut corners, took shortcuts and circumvented the very testing and certification processes it advertised, for its own benefit and profit\u201d.CrowdStrike\u2019s lawyers denied responsibility for the scale of Delta\u2019s disruption and argued that the security company\u2019s liability is capped \u201cin the single-digit millions\u201d by its contracts. CrowdStrike said Delta\u2019s claims were \u201cbased on disproven misinformation\u201d and demonstrated \u201ca lack of understanding of how modern cyber security works\u201d.Beyond Delta, Bernstein analyst Peter Weed said CrowdStrike did not appear to be at risk of losing most of its larger customers, in part because of the \u201cstickiness\u201d of its product.\u201cThe more that you have implemented CrowdStrike, the harder it is to remove,\u201d said Weed. He noted, however, that the fourth quarter, when more contracts are up for renewal, could be the next big test. The company had also been able to use outages as an opportunity to become \u201ca bit more aggressive in the marketplace\u201d, including by promoting additional products to existing customers through free trials, said Boolani.CrowdStrike said in August it would spend $60mn on incentives to appease clients. The perks \u2014 which the company branded \u201ccustomer commitment packages\u201d \u2014 included free subscription extensions and add-on features, and helped drive more customers to switch to the flexible pricing model that the company launched in 2023. The total value of \u201cFalcon Flex\u201d contracts \u2014 which are intended to promote wider use of the company\u2019s more than 20 different service \u201cmodules\u201d \u2014 nearly doubled to $1.3bn in the three months to September. This flexible subscription programme is key to CrowdStrike\u2019s growth ambitions. \u201cIf you want more growth then you have to find other things to sell to your existing customers,\u201d said Weed. Going forward, CrowdStrike may also benefit from the perception that Microsoft\u2019s operating system was as much, if not even more, responsible for the outage\u2019s impact, according to Forrester analyst Allie Mellen. Microsoft declined to comment.The incident has heightened scrutiny from regulators and business leaders over the extent of access that third-party software vendors have to the core, or kernel, of Microsoft\u2019s Windows operating systems. Bugs in the kernel, such as CrowdStrike\u2019s faulty update, can quickly crash an entire system.Apple, which was not hit by the outages, blocks all third-party providers from accessing the kernel of its MacOS operating system, forcing them to operate in the more limited \u201cuser-mode\u201d.\u201cIf anything, the migration that results from this incident might be away from Microsoft, not CrowdStrike,\u201d Mellen said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.CrowdStrike, the cyber security company behind the botched update that took down millions of Windows PCs and servers in July,\u00a0has more than recovered the $30bn in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-153116","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}