A few weeks ago, CrowdStrike caused worldwide chaos when a failed update caused more than eight million Windows computers to crash. The security company is now proving that it can take the situation with humor.
It is undoubtedly not easy being the boss of CrowdStrike at the moment. Not only do you have to listen to questions from politicians, business people and security experts, but you are also faced with (threatened) lawsuits like the one from Delta Air Lines. Even if it is not clear whether this would stand a chance, it is certainly not easy to have to justify it. One might therefore think that CrowdStrike is largely withdrawing from the public eye and trying to hide until further notice so that the biggest IT failure of all time is forgotten. But CrowdStrike has chosen a different approach, namely the bulldozer.
For example, they had their own stand at the Black Hat security conference and handed out T-shirts and other goodies – to great attention. They also had no intention of hiding at the Def Con that followed. The ‘Pwnie Awards’ were also presented at this hacker conference – these are negative prizes that are given for the biggest security mistakes. #
Normally, most companies and institutions want nothing to do with it, but not CrowdStrike. The security company was reportedly TechCrunch with a main prize, namely for the “Most Epic Fail”. Michael Sentonas, the President of CrowdStrike, accepted this and showed a lot of humor. Sentonas admitted that this is not the kind of award that one would like to receive and be proud of: “I think the team (the Pwnie Award) was surprised when I immediately said I would get it.
We have said this many times and it is meaningful to be able to stand by something when you do something well and it is also appropriate to be able to stand by it when you do something horribly wrong.” Sentonas finally said that he would take the trophy to headquarters and put it in a prominent place – as a reminder that “our goal is to protect people and we failed to do that and I want to make sure everyone understands that something like this cannot happen again.”
