CrowdStrike outage tipped to leave Australian businesses with damage bill surpassing $1 billion
It's been a busy weekend for cyber security analysts who have been helping businesses get back up and running after the CrowdStrike outage took down millions of computers globally. Some economists and businesses groups believe it cost the Australian economy billions of dollars.
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00:00It might be the first day back in the office for some, but employees at this cyber security
00:07firm have been helping clients all weekend.
00:10It was a marathon run with our global teams working collaboratively together.
00:16Millions of computers across the globe crashed after a software update by cyber security
00:20firm CrowdStrike went wrong.
00:22The outage upended Jetstar's network and left Felicity Sim's family stranded in Bali.
00:27When we got to Bali airport we saw that the flight had been cancelled.
00:31It's very stressful when you've got a young family.
00:34Jetstar says it's working through the IT issues and has offered customers free flight moves
00:39or refunds.
00:40The fallout from the outage is expected to last for weeks.
00:43This will cost the Australian economy multiple billions of dollars by the time we tally up
00:49the impact.
00:51And it's unclear who will foot the bill.
00:53Whether there might be some federal government scheme in place to help businesses seek redress
00:59or if businesses are going to have to deal directly with CrowdStrike here to try to work
01:04through compensation through their insurance.
01:07CrowdStrike's going to have to be accountable for this and I think they understand that.
01:11On CrowdStrike's website it excludes liability for outages beyond its control.
01:16But customers who spent less than $100,000 on CrowdStrike software and fall under Australian
01:21consumer law may be entitled to cancel their contract and receive a refund for what's left
01:27of it or seek compensation for foreseeable losses.
01:30CrowdStrike has warned scammers are taking advantage of the situation and targeting customers.
01:35Experts say Australians should be alert to suspicious emails, as always.
01:40Meanwhile some business groups are calling for government intervention to put in place
01:44contingencies to prevent a similar event causing so much chaos again.
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