Counting the cost of CrowdStrike: the bug that bit billions

Operational expenses and loss to business would differ greatly from organization to organization, and segment to segment. Parametrix, using its service monitoring sensors, estimated healthcare suffering the most at $1.94 billion in direct losses from the incident, with banking and transportation closely behind at $1.15 billion and $0.86 billion, respectively. It estimated the loss per company for these three segments at $64.60 million, $71.8 million and $143.38 million, respectively.

Chris Steffen, vice president of research at Enterprise Management Associates, said the numbers could actually be much higher. “Parametrix claims that there was only $146 million in direct loss to the airline industry,” he said. “But several airlines experienced multiple days of outage (Delta was finally cleared up and running on Wednesday this week). Even if you consider monetary fines associated with delays and rebookings, never mind brand reputation and other unrealized costs, $146 million seems very low.”

Apart from the direct losses, the additional hidden costs from the incident are likely to include customer compensation for loss of service and non-compliance fines, Brown added. Discussion on what those figures might look like are currently underway.