As news of the CrowdStrike Falcon outage continues, the financial toll on businesses from the global incident continues to mount, with a Parametrix report estimating losses to Fortune 500 companies could reach $5.4 billion.
Researchers at Parametrix found that roughly 25% of Fortune 500 companies experienced disruption as a result of the incident, with the industries most financially affected being healthcare (estimated losses of $1.94 billion) and banking ($1.15 billion). Additionally, a staggering 100% of the transportation and aviation sector was affected, with forecasts predicting losses across this group will reach $860 million. This $5.4 billion estimate doesn’t even include Microsoft.
The impact of the outages on some industries, such as software and IT-related services, is likely to have “ripple effects beyond Fortune 500 companies,” the researchers said, although the report did not provide specific figures.
Parametrix previously detailed how the cloud was the catalyst for the outage’s widespread impact, saying, “This event highlights the heavy reliance of large enterprises on cloud services and the systemic risks posed by such outages.” In order to prevent future losses, the new report encourages cyber insurers and risk assessors to focus on mapping, managing and assessing the risks of cloud-based service providers, stressing the importance of taking a broader view and not relying solely on the CrowdStrike event as the main reference for “modeling future systemic outages involving cloud-based service providers.”
