Crowdstrike could lose $16 billion – a fifth of its value – due to global IT outages

Shares of cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike, the company behind the global Microsoft outage, lost a fifth of their value in U.S. trading and fell 21 percent in unofficial trading, putting the company at nearly $16 billion in value after it was caught up in a massive IT outage that affected businesses and airports worldwide.

According to Oleg Gorokhovsky, founder of Ukrainian online bank Monobank, the outage was caused by “an interaction between CrowdStrike antivirus software” and Microsoft’s Windows operating system. Crowdstrike CEO George Kurtz said the company is “actively working with customers affected by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts.”

He added: “Mac and Linux hosts are not affected. This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated, and a fix deployed. We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide full and continuous updates on our website.”

Microsoft also responded to the technical glitch, saying a fix for Windows devices would be available “shortly,” while blaming a third-party vendor. The company said: “We are aware of an issue affecting Windows devices due to an update from a third-party software platform. We expect a fix to be available shortly.”