CrowdStrike develops software to help companies manage the security of their IT environments.
Sopa Images | Light Rocket | Getty Images
Cyber Security Company mass strike The company’s shares plummeted on Friday after an update caused a major outage, affecting businesses around the world.
Shares of the company, which makes software that helps companies manage the security of their IT environments, fell more than 14% at the opening and were down more than 8% as of 10:50 a.m.
Speaking about the incident on Friday morning, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said the issues were caused by “a flaw discovered in a single content update for Windows consoles.”
“This is not a security incident or cyber attack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed,” Kurts said in a post on social media platform.
MicrosoftThe company also reported issues affecting its Azure cloud services and Microsoft 365 suite of apps, which were down about 1% as of 9:30 a.m.
Many different websites were down on Friday morning as planes were grounded and television studios suspended broadcasts. Ongoing major IT disruption.
Earlier on Friday, CrowdStrike suffered significant outages due to update issues affecting its Falcon Sensor product, which is designed to block cyber vulnerabilities using cloud-based technology. CrowdStrike is currently rolling back updates globally.
“CrowdStrike is aware of reports of Windows host crashes related to Falcon sensors,” CrowdStrike told NBC News in a recorded phone message.
Cybersecurity experts say the CrowdStrike update issue directly affected Windows systems around the world, with laptops displaying error screens known as “blue screen of death.”
it appears after Microsoft said earlier on Friday Its cloud services have been largely restored after suffering an outage in the United States that affected its cloud applications.
Global outages have shown that a single point of failure in an online supply chain can have huge ripple effects around the world.
CrowdStrike’s Pain Is Gains for Other Internet Stocks
CrowdStrike has been a winner among Internet stocks over the past year, with its shares up nearly 118% in the past 12 months.
Some analysts have questioned CrowdStrike’s high valuation – the company was worth $83.5 billion as of Thursday’s close. Redburn Atlantic analyst Nina Marques said this week that the company faces challenges competing with other Internet companies in the hyperscale enterprise market.
“CrowdStrike’s strength in the endpoint protection market has long supported its premium valuation relative to peers,” Marks said in a Thursday research note.
“While we do not dispute the quality and performance of CrowdStrike’s products, we do anticipate that the company will face challenges in penetrating the very large enterprise market to maximize cross-selling opportunities to offset deflationary effects.”
The research firm downgraded CrowdStrike’s stock rating to “sell” on Thursday and lowered the stock’s price target from $380 to $275, a decrease of 28%.
As CrowdStrike shares plunged on Friday, other cybersecurity vendors benefited, possibly as investors bet companies might abandon CrowdStrike and flock to competing companies.
shares Palo Alto Following earlier highs, it rose 1.3%, while flying tower It rose 1.6% in pre-market trading. Z scaler and Yunyao Both were up about 1% in pre-market trading.
—CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal contributed to this report
