CrowdStrike CFO addresses anger over outage, but downplays legal challenges

CrowdStrike’s CFO has said the company is trying to “start a dialogue” with angry customers in the wake of July’s major outage. Speaking during a Citi technology conference, Burt Podbere acknowledged that “in the short term, people were upset and the full focus was, of course, getting people up and running.”

However, he appeared to sidestep recent changes to the company’s guidance, including a reduction in its full-year guidance due to incentives for a customer commitment package. He also failed to mention the backlash from the firm’s $10 UberEats gift codes, which were issued to partners and teammates as the chaos ensued. Podbere also stated: “To the best of my knowledge, we actually haven’t seen a lawsuit against us by a customer for the incident.”

The outage disrupted internet services, affecting 8.5 million Microsoft Windows devices and causing mass flight cancellations.

Earlier this year, the finance chief noted in a conference call with analysts that the company’s customer agreements contained liability limitations and that it holds insurance policies and maintains cash reserves to mitigate potential legal claim impacts. However, investors have continued to push down CrowdStrike’s share price in response to the outage. The cybersecurity software company is currently dealing with class action lawsuits and a legal threat from Delta Air Lines.

At the same time, Crowdstrike is expected to attend a Microsoft-hosted summit next month to “discuss concrete steps we will all take to improve security and resiliency for our joint customers.” The tech giant is stepping up its plans to make Windows more resilient to buggy software.

Despite this, at the end of August, the firm reported that its revenue had grown by 32 percent year-over-year in the quarter. Podbere claimed that CrowdStrike’s response to the outage had actually encouraged customers to remain loyal.

He said: “They saw a company that reached out to its customers, didn’t try to hide anywhere, came front and center. So there was an appreciation for that.”

However, he downplayed the multi-million dollar lawsuits against CrowdStrike, stating: “Everything we’re doing and trying to do is take the legal discussion away from our interaction with customers and move it to the business discussion with the CCP.”

ReadWrite has reached out to CrowdStrike for comment.

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