Crowdstrike CFO brushes off legal threats over global outage

CrowdStrike has yet to face a lawsuit over July's global IT meltdown, according to CFO Burt Podbere.

Podbere was speaking during a Citi technology conference in which he tackled the outage and its impact on the company head on. The global IT meltdown was caused by a configuration update file that CrowdStrike's software could not parse. The result was Blue Screens of Death popping up on Windows systems worldwide.

Unsurprisingly, Podbere put a brave face on things. "In the short term, people were upset," he said. However, according to the CFO, customers came around and appreciated CrowdStrike's attempts to explain the disruption and get them back up and running.

Podbere acknowledged there had been some impact on the company's financials – unavoidable considering that CrowdStrike recently published its Q2 earnings report in which annual recurring revenue (ARR) increased, but the full year forecast was cut. He also noted the customer commitment packages designed to appease those most affected, but did not mention the infamous $10 UberEats gift codes issued to partners and teammates as the chaos unfolded.

The specter of impending lawsuits does, however, loom over the company. "As of this morning, to the best of my knowledge, we actually haven't seen a lawsuit against us by a customer for the incident," Podbere said at the event held on September 4. Still, it is hard not to imagine lawyers sharpening their claws.

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There were dark rumblings from Delta Air Lines last month, for example, threatening litigation over alleged gross negligence. At the time, CrowdStrike reiterated its apologies, saying: "Public posturing about potentially bringing a meritless lawsuit against CrowdStrike as a long-time partner is not constructive to any party."

During his time at the Citi conference, Podbere admitted: "We don't know how it's all going to shake out.

"Everything we're doing and trying to do is take the legal discussion away from our interaction with customers and move it to the business discussion.

"And as time goes on, that does get easier because we're moving further away from the Sun, right? And that's how we think about it."

It's perhaps the best approach when faced with legal threats – ignore them and hope they go away. Unfortunately for Podbere, however, the fallout from the outage is unlikely to go away soon. A VP from the company has been called to testify before the US House Homeland Security Committee later this month, and no legal action against CrowdStrike is improbable.

We asked Delta Air Lines for its thoughts on Podbere's statement, but the company has not replied. ®