Massive cost of global outage revealed
Experts have estimated that the global CrowdStrike IT outage has cost more than $1.5 billion in damages, as thousands of businesses were affected by the mass disruption.
On Friday afternoon, thousands of workers and business who rely on the Microsoft computer system were hit with the "blue screen of death", as computers, EFTPOS machines and even the airport display screens froze.
It was later revealed to be a bug wrought from a software update, originating from Texas-based cyber security firm CrowdStrike.
The simple tech fail brought much of the world to its knees for hours, as airports, hospitals, shops, business, media outlets and banks were impacted.
One American cyber expert estimated that compensation claims could easily top $1 billion USD ($1.5 billion AUD).
However, it looks like the damages will be a lot more than that, as Business NSW estimated that in NSW alone, businesses racked up an eye-watering $200 million bill in damages.
CrowdStrike has yet to address millions of questions about how it plans to compensate customers, although the company's CEO George Kurtz said the firm is concentrating all its efforts on fixing the problems, and that he believed most customers had been understanding.
“My goal right now is to make sure every customer is back up and running,” Mr Kurtz said.
“I think many of the customers understand it’s a complex environment and staying one step ahead of the bad guys requires these content updates.”
Hundreds of thousands of businesses are expected to file for compensation with the company, as Patrick Anderson, CEO of US research firm Anderson Economic Group, told CNN, “This outage is affecting far more consumers and businesses in a way that ranges from inconvenience to serious disruptions and resulted in out of pocket costs they can’t get back easily”.
Image credits: RAJAT GUPTA/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock Editorial/Instagram