'You Can't Make This Stuff Up': Here's What CrowdStrike Gave Its Partners After Global Outage

Leah Barkoukis | July 25, 2024 1:00 PM

The cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike wants its partners to know how sorry it is for bringing their businesses to a grinding halt last week after a faulty software update crashed Windows computers around the world.

CrowdStrike reportedly sent a $10 Uber Eats gift card to its “teammates and partners who have been helping customers through this situation.”

lol Crowdstrike crashed millions of computers with a glitch and then sent an apology to partners in the form of a $10 Uber Eats gift card pic.twitter.com/6ZaYdf1TS6
— Sheel Mohnot (@pitdesi) July 24, 2024

“To express our gratitude, your next cup of coffee or late night snack is on us!” said the email, which included a promo code for Uber Eats and was reportedly sent in the name of CrowdStrike’s chief business officer Daniel Bernard.
The email was sent from a CrowdStrike email address in the name of Daniel Bernard, the company’s chief business officer, according to a screenshot of the email seen by TechCrunch.
The voucher didn’t even work for some who tried to redeem the offer. CrowdStrike spokesperson Kevin Benacci explained to media outlets that “Uber flagged it as fraud because of high usage rates.” (Tech Crunch)

Excluding Microsoft, U.S. Fortune 500 companies face more than $5 billion in financial losses due to the outage, insurer Parametrix told Reuters, while the global financial cost could be as high as $15 billion.

“On Friday, we failed you, and for that I’m deeply sorry,” he said. "The past two days have been the most challenging 48 hours for me over 12+ years. The confidence we built in drips over the years was lost in buckets within hours, and it was a gut punch. But this pales in comparison to the pain we've caused our customers and our partners. We let down the very people we committed to protect, and to say we’re devastated is a huge understatement."