Industry braces for barrage of claims due to CrowdStrike outage

Cyber insurance policyholders are said to be gearing up to file claims following the global CrowdStrike outage, which founder and chief executive George Kurtz has clarified was not a cyberattack.

A cybersecurity firm whose systems are used by the likes of banks and airlines, CrowdStrike recently saw clients being disrupted as a result of a content deployment issue during a software update. As noted by the company, those impacted experienced a bugcheck or blue screen error.

In a statement, Kurtz said: “I want to sincerely apologize directly to all of you for the outage. All of CrowdStrike understands the gravity and impact of the situation. We quickly identified the issue and deployed a fix, allowing us to focus diligently on restoring customer systems as our highest priority.

“The outage was caused by a defect found in a Falcon content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This was not a cyberattack.

“We are working closely with impacted customers and partners to ensure that all systems are restored so you can deliver the services your customers rely on.”

Meanwhile customers of CrowdStrike – whose team is “fully mobilized” in response to the incident – are advised to check the company’s support portal for updates.

At the same time, affected users with cyber coverage are preparing to file their insurance claims.

According to broking giant Marsh, its clients have already provided notice to their insurers in relation to claims they are looking to file.

CrowdStrike, meanwhile, issued an update over the weekend, saying: “Together with customers, CrowdStrike tested a new technique to accelerate impacted system remediation. We’re in the process of operationalizing an opt-in to this technique.

“Customers are encouraged to follow the Tech Alerts for latest updates as they happen, and they will be notified when action is needed.”

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