Asia-Pacific faces fallout from CrowdStrike outage: ‘It will continue to happen’

However, insurers and IT experts said the outages’ impact on the region was limited and would not lead to an overhaul of cybersecurity protocols, although they recommended businesses strengthen their backup systems and continuity plans in case similar incidents strike again in the future.

Speculation of a malicious cyberattack quickly died down after the true culprit behind the chaos was revealed to be a software update from CrowdStrike, a global leader in cybersecurity technology, that was pushed to their Falcon platform, which is designed to stop system breaches using cloud technology.

In Asia-Pacific, where CrowdStrike is not as commonly used as other security software, the damage caused by the outage appears to have generally been limited. A few countries like Thailand were spared from the upheaval, with no reported impact on critical systems like telecommunication networks or government infrastructure.

“Tech companies have little empathy. What we went through with Covid they had no sympathy. Now they have issues they expect us all to understand. Well, I’m not going to. Airlines need answers and compensation,” he wrote in a social media post.

Questions now loom about the size of the damage and who will pay for the financial losses incurred by affected CrowdStrike customers.

IT companies and insurers are scrambling to estimate the impact on businesses. On Thursday, insurer Parametrix said banking, healthcare and airlines would bear the brunt of the losses, with US Fortune 500 companies projected to take a US$5.4 billion hit.

The Australian Industry Group told local press the losses in Australia – home to CrowdStrike’s biggest Asia-Pacific customer base – would exceed A$1 billion (US$652.3 million).

Despite those staggering