CrowdStrike Strikes!

Were you affected by CrowdStrike’s blue screen of death?

The flawed computer software update caused chaos worldwide, impacting airports, NHS services, TV broadcasts, online banking access, and even leading to unanswered 911 calls in the US.

When hacking is the cause, there are clear legal ramifications. But what about faulty software? Are there any legal consequences? In the UK, Ofcom recently fined BT £17.5 million for a 10-hour network fault that affected 999 calls. Similarly, car manufacturers Volkswagen and BMW were fined €875 million for breaking EU antitrust rules.

But the New York Times suggests there’s little incentive for software firms to prevent such incidents in the future.

“The consequences for significant outages can be so minimal that companies are not motivated to make more fundamental changes”

Instead, they can simply provide a software fix for the immediate issue and carry on. After all, we often sign contracts with software companies with exclusions for malfunctioning software updates. Yet potential lawsuits from business-to-business customers could prompt CrowdStrike and other major technology companies to reflect and improve their practices.

In the meantime, incidents where buggy software brings down entire systems reveals how vulnerable our infrastructure is.

Should software companies be more liable for issues like this? What’s your lawyer’s perspective on the global outage? Let us know in the comments below.