Shares of cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike fell more than 13% as the company weighed the fallout from a global IT outage.
Chief security officer Shawn Henry said the incident was a “huge blow” to the company, which had previously been one of the most trusted names in the industry.
“We have failed the people we pledged to protect, and to say we are devastated is an understatement,” he said.
Many businesses are still recovering from last week’s “content update” glitch that crashed 8.5 million Microsoft Windows computers worldwide.
This issue requires a manual restart in some cases.
Mr. Henry, a former executive assistant director of the FBI, said the past weekend was “the most challenging 48 hours” in his 12 years at the agency.
He promised that the company would use the incident as an opportunity to “come back better and stronger than ever.”
“The trust we built in drips over years was lost in buckets in a matter of hours, and that was a punch in the gut,” he said. in a LinkedIn post in Monday.
“But this is nothing compared to the pain we have caused our customers and partners.”
Delta Airlines, one of the hardest hit airlines, has canceled more than 4,000 flights since Friday, including more than 800 in Monday, according to outside tracking company, Flight Aware.
This figure is much higher than any other airline.
Delta said Monday that more than half of its IT systems run on Windows and require manual repairs. The software it uses to direct employees to flights is the most time-consuming and manual to fix, the airline said.
“We have mobilized everyone across the company to work around the clock to get this operation where it needs to be,” Delta boss Ed Bastian said in a video message to employees on Monday.
The day before, he apologized to the customer, as US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg warned the government had received complaints about “persistent disruptions and unacceptable customer service” at the company.
Other organisations, such as the UK’s National Health Service, say their systems are operating more normally.
Speaking in the House of Commons on Monday, Cabinet Office Minister Ellie Reeves said most of the sectors affected by the CrowdStrike bug had largely recovered, including aviation, rail and maritime systems.
But she warned that some “minor disruption” would continue, including in the NHS.
She added that the government would work with the National Cyber Security Centre and other partners “to review the lessons learned”.
The minister told parliamentarians that the incident showed how reliant the modern world was on “complex and interconnected IT systems and how essential it is to be prepared for such events”.
Founded in 2011, CrowdStrike boasts approximately 29,000 customers worldwide, including government agencies in the US and UK and some of the world’s largest companies.
The company’s shares had risen nearly 40% this year before the crash.
It is said on Sunday that A “significant number” of devices affected by Friday’s global IT outage are back online.
But the hit to CrowdStrike shares on Monday, after falling 11% on Friday, reflected the severity of the incident. The company’s stock ended trading below $264, down more than 13%.
Some investors are betting that the company’s rivals will benefit from the company’s current troubles, which have exposed the world’s dependence on one giant company and drawn attention from antitrust regulators.
Shares of Sentinel One, for example, rose more than 8% on Monday.
Analysts say that while CrowdStrike’s stock is suffering now, they don’t see the business suffering long-term.
“The reality is that despite CrowdStrike’s catastrophic failure last week, there are very few alternatives to CrowdStrike and the switching costs are very high,” said Gene Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management, a firm known for its technology investments. wrote on social media.
“In other words, when the company reports its July quarter in late August, I expect the commentary to shed light on the short-term customer retention landscape. However, I expect there will be few instances of customer churn in the long term.”
CrowdStrike needs to address its issues this week, said Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives.
“This will take some time to resolve but does not change our positive view of CrowdStrike or the cybersecurity sector,” he wrote in a note on Monday.
Reporting contributed by Chris Vallance
