Executive Testimony Before Congress on CrowdStrike Outage

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A senior executive at cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike (NASDAQ:CRWD) will testify before a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee on Sept. 24 regarding the company’s faulty software update that caused a global IT outage.

Adam Meyers, senior vice president for counter adversary operations at CrowdStrike, is set to appear before the House Homeland Security Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection subcommittee. This announcement was made by the panel on Friday.

Representative Mark Green, chair of the Homeland Security committee, emphasized the importance of restoring confidence in IT infrastructure, stating, “Considering the significant impact CrowdStrike’s faulty software update had on Americans and critical sectors of the economy — from aviation to medical services — we must restore confidence in the IT that underpins the services Americans depend on daily.”

In July, the committee had sent a letter to CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz, requesting him to testify on the global tech outage that occurred the previous week. CrowdStrike has not yet commented on the matter.

The July 19 incident resulted in worldwide flight cancellations and affected various industries including banks, healthcare, media companies, and hotel chains. The outage disrupted internet services for 8.5 million Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) Windows devices.

Delta Air Lines (NYSE:DAL) announced plans to take legal action after the outage led to the cancellation of 7,000 flights, impacting 1.3 million passengers over five days and costing the airline $500 million. CrowdStrike has defended itself against Delta’s claims of responsibility for the disruptions.

This week, CrowdStrike also lowered its revenue and profit estimates due to the fallout from the faulty software update, indicating that the difficult environment would persist for about a year. Additionally, CrowdStrike revealed it has received inquiries from governmental authorities regarding the incident.