Susan McCarthy: The Crowdstrike Apology

This time, on the Plutopia podcast, blogger and author Susan McCarthy, a noted authority on apologies, helps us perform a verbal autopsy on the worldwide CrowdStrike security meltdown. Unlike most large outages, the CrowdStrike outage impacted individual workstations, Microsoft Windows workstations. In the aftermath, CrowdStrike apologized and even offered a $10 Uber Eats voucher. Susan found the CrowdStrike apology somewhat lacking. Our discussion centers around the global impact of the outage, which caused thousands of Microsoft Windows workstations to crash, leading to significant financial losses for companies like Delta Airlines. McCarthy critiques CrowdStrike’s apology, noting its inadequacies, particularly the company’s decision to offer those Uber Eats vouchers, which she argues were both insufficient and potentially damaging to the company’s reputation. The conversation explores the broader implications of corporate apologies in the tech industry, emphasizing the importance of taking full responsibility and making meaningful reparations to restore trust. Background Links Brian Fung sums up what went wrong pretty well at CNN. Initial estimates put daamge to Fortune 500 companies in revenues and gross profit at $5.4 billion Cybersecurity praises Crowdstrike’s “quick apology” Backlash over $10 Uber Eats gift certificate Delta Airlines has hired David Boies to demand compensation from Crowdstrike for 6,000 canceled flights AT&T issue (February 2024). Note it’s the same cause: failure to test software update properly. AT&T Apology AT&T offers some compensation in the form of credit to customers