After a single CrowdStrike update caused the largest IT outage in history last month, affecting 8.5 million Windows devices, impacting 1.4 million travelers and causing bank outages at JPMorgan and Bank of America, you wouldn’t expect the company to be winning any accolades.
But on Saturday, CrowdStrike picked up a large, two-tiered trophy for “most epic fail” at the annual Pwnie Awards in Las Vegas. And even more surprisingly, CrowdStrike President Michael Sentonas accepted the award in person.
“This is definitely not an award to be proud of,” he said when accepting the award. “I think the team was surprised when I immediately said I would come and pick them up because we got this terribly wrong.”
Sentonas said he wanted to return the trophy to CrowdStrike headquarters in Austin, Texas, so that every CrowdStrike employee could see it and learn from the incident.
“From that perspective, I will say thank you and accept the trophy,” Setonas said. “We will put it in the right place and make sure everyone sees it.”
CrowdStrike accepts the @PwnieAwards for the “biggest fail” at @defcon. Great performance. pic.twitter.com/e7IgYosHAE
— Dominic White ? (@singe) 10 August 2024
Although Sentonas gratefully accepted the award, the July 19 incident was more than just a learning experience for CrowdStrike.
The outage was caused by a bug in a software update that caused a blue screen on Microsoft Windows devices. The update delayed over 10,000 flights, led to the cancellation of scheduled operations, disrupted emergency services and impacted other operations around the world.
It may also have cost Fortune 500 companies around $5.4 billion in damages. Delta wrote in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last week that the outage affected 1.3 million of its customers, a day after some of those customers sued Delta in a class-action lawsuit over the airline’s handling of canceled flights.
CrowdStrike was also sued by airline travelers in a class action lawsuit last week. CrowdStrike shareholders additionally sued the company earlier this month after the company’s stock price fell 32% in the 12 days following the outage.
Related: A Crowdstrike update caused the largest IT outage in history on Friday. This is how the CEO reacted.
