A week ago, CrowdStrike rolled out an update that caused approximately 8.5 million Windows machines worldwide to enter infinite boot loops.

The global IT outage has been described as the largest in history and is being directly compared to the historic Y2K scare. The CrowdStrike outage was a result of a faulty kernel driver update being rolled out CrowdStrike's Falcon Sensor security software, and, unfortunately, the faulty update caused a kernel-level malfunction that required physical intervention for remediation.
The outage affected numerous industries around the globe, such as airlines, supermarkets, telecommunications systems, point-of-sale systems, emergency services, and various other businesses. Now, we are starting to hear the first estimations of the amount of money lost due to Windows machines being down, with cloud monitoring and insurance company Parametrix estimating a fourth of the Fortune 500 companies were affected by the outage.
That fourth took an estimated hit of $5.4 billion, and that insurance may not even cover it all as Parametrix estimates a payout will only amount to $540 million to $1.1 billion. Why? Parametrix says the limited insurance payout is "due to many companies' large risk retentions, and to low policy limits relative to the potential outage loss."
So, what industries were hit the hardest?
- Manufacturing - $10s of millions
- Transportation (excluding airlines) - $10s of millions
- Finance - $10s of millions
- Retail - $500 million
- IT - $500 million
- Airlines - $860 million
- Banking / Healthcare - $3 billion
Parametrix CEO Jonatan Hatzor told Reuters the estimated global financial loss as a result of the outage is around $15 billion, and global insured losses could be between $1.5 - $3