The cybersecurity firm is facing fresh criticism after it emerged that it had offered its staff and some partners an apology in the form of a $10 UberEats voucher
Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike is facing new criticism after offering a $10 UberEats voucher as an apology for the major global IT outage last week which grounded flights and cancelled medical appointments.
A botched software update from the company affected approximately 8.5 million Windows computers worldwide last Friday, bringing businesses and infrastructure to a grinding halt. The firm has now been slammed for sending an email to staff and some partners thanking them for their efforts to rectify the issue, which read: “To express our gratitude, your next cup of coffee or late night snack is on us! “.
This move has been widely ridiculed and criticised on social media, with some suggesting that the offer of a cuppa doesn’t compensate for the thousands of hours of lost work time and the damage done to public trust in the company. The scheme has also been marred by reports of some being unable to redeem the code, with CrowdStrike admitting that Uber later flagged the offering as fraud “because of high usage rates”.
The offer does not seem to have been extended to CrowdStrike customers impacted by the outage. This comes as questions linger over whether any financial compensation will be due to CrowdStrike customers because of the outage, but the cybersecurity firm has vowed to enhance its software testing procedures following the incident.
In their investigation report into the massive outage, CrowdStrike revealed that a glitch in their system caused “problematic content data” in a software update file to be overlooked. Being under the microscope on an international level, the US firm is also expected to make an appearance before Congress, as chief executive George Kurtz has been summoned to explain the incident before American lawmakers.
