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Facepalm: The global security outage that impacted 8.5 million PCs around the world last week was an absolute disaster for the company responsible, CrowdStrike, and has even led to its CEO being called to testify before Congress. However, the cybersecurity giant has handed out a generous gift to its partners who have been dealing with the aftermath of the incident: a $10 UberEats gift card. Sadly, some found the cards weren't working.
Many businesses around the world are still recovering from the crashes stemming from an update to CrowdStrike's widely used security software. It caused Windows machines to become stuck in a Blue Screen of Death boot loop, impacting everything from airlines and banks to broadcasters and hospitals. CrowdStrike now blames the issue on a bug in the tool used to validate rapid updates.
To apologize to its partners in the Accelerate Program, who sell and manage CrowdStrike for customers, the company has sent them $10 UberEats vouchers. Its way of saying sorry for having to deal with all the extra work resulting from the disaster.
– Morning Brew �*ï¸Â (@MorningBrew) July 19, 2024
There's little doubt that partners would have had to endure the wrath of many angry CrowdStrike users as their businesses ground to a halt, not to mention all the extra work that they would have had to do.
"We send our heartfelt thanks and apologies for the inconvenience," CrowdStrike wrote in an email to partners, as seen by TechCrunch. The security firm said it was offering the card as recognition for "the additional work that the July 19 incident has caused."
"To express our gratitude, your next cup of coffee or late night snack is on us!" the email continued, which would probably have come in handy when staff were working around the clock.
$10 isn't going to get you very much from UberEats. What made the situation even more comical/tragic is that many people who received the voucher encountered an error message when trying to redeem it.
CrowdStrike spokesperson Kevin Benacci confirmed to TechCrunch that Uber had flagged the gift cards as fraud because of high usage rates. Recipients were eventually able to redeem them.
It's estimated that the CrowdStrike outage may have cost Fortune 500 companies up to $5.4 billion in revenues and gross profit.
Masthead: Robert Anasch