LONDON (S&P Global Ratings) July 19, 2024--S&P Global Ratings said today that the wide-scale disruption caused by the software update launched by CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. highlights the risks to the global IT ecosystem arising from the interdependency of critical systems and software. This event also underscores the concentration risk arising from the dominance of a few key vendors in the global IT ecosystem. We understand that CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a content update for Windows hosts, and that Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted.
While CrowdStrike has indicated this is not a security incident or cyberattack and that they have identified, isolated, and are fixing the problem, the event has disrupted critical systems across a wide range of companies worldwide and we believe it has wide-ranging ramifications. Even organizations that do not directly use CrowdStrike may also have been impacted by third-party vendors/stakeholders that do.
Typically following an event like this, whether malicious or not, credit risks tend to rise from revenue loss and reputational damage, and longer term many companies will continue to incur costs to respond to and remediate impacted IT systems and business processes. With growing digitization, S&P Global Ratings believes these incidents may become more commonplace. Therefore, the ability of organizations to recover quickly and restore operations will be more paramount. Typically, defined business continuity and well-tested disaster recovery plans can mitigate the risk.
We will monitor any potential credit impact on rated issuers, including Microsoft Corp. and CrowdStrike, as events evolve.
RELATED RESEARCH
- Bulletin: CrowdStrike Holdings Inc.'s Credit-Related Fallout From Outage Is Currently Unknown, July 19, 2024
This report does not constitute a rating action.
S&P Global Ratings, part of S&P Global Inc. (NYSE: SPGI), is the world's leading provider of independent credit risk research. We publish more than a million credit ratings on debt issued by sovereign, municipal, corporate and financial sector entities. With over 1,600 credit analysts in 27 countries, and more than 150 years' experience of assessing credit risk, we offer a unique combination of global coverage and local insight. Our research and opinions about relative credit risk provide market participants with information that helps to support the growth of transparent, liquid debt markets worldwide.
| Primary Credit Analysts: | Raam Ratnam, CFA, CPA, London + 44 20 7176 7462; raam.ratnam@spglobal.com |
| Paul Alvarez, Washington D.C. +1 2023832104; paul.alvarez@spglobal.com | |
| Secondary Contacts: | Tiffany Tribbitt, New York + 1 (212) 438 8218; Tiffany.Tribbitt@spglobal.com |
| Nik Khakee, New York + 1 (212) 438 2473; nik.khakee@spglobal.com |
No content (including ratings, credit-related analyses and data, valuations, model, software, or other application or output therefrom) or any part thereof (Content) may be modified, reverse engineered, reproduced, or distributed in any form by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of Standard & Poor’s Financial Services LLC or its affiliates (collectively, S&P). The Content shall not be used for any unlawful or unauthorized purposes. S&P and any third-party providers, as well as their directors, officers, shareholders, employees, or agents (collectively S&P Parties) do not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, timeliness, or availability of the Content. S&P Parties are not responsible for any errors or omissions (negligent or otherwise), regardless of the cause, for the results obtained from the use of the Content, or for the security or maintenance of any data input by the user. The Content is provided on an “as is” basis. S&P PARTIES DISCLAIM ANY AND ALL EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR USE, FREEDOM FROM BUGS, SOFTWARE ERRORS OR DEFECTS, THAT THE CONTENT’S FUNCTIONING WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, OR THAT THE CONTENT WILL OPERATE WITH ANY SOFTWARE OR HARDWARE CONFIGURATION. In no event shall S&P Parties be liable to any party for any direct, indirect, incidental, exemplary, compensatory, punitive, special or consequential damages, costs, expenses, legal fees, or losses (including, without limitation, lost income or lost profits and opportunity costs or losses caused by negligence) in connection with any use of the Content even if advised of the possibility of such damages.
Credit-related and other analyses, including ratings, and statements in the Content are statements of opinion as of the date they are expressed and not statements of fact. S&P’s opinions, analyses, and rating acknowledgment decisions (described below) are not recommendations to purchase, hold, or sell any securities or to make any investment decisions, and do not address the suitability of any security. S&P assumes no obligation to update the Content following publication in any form or format. The Content should not be relied on and is not a substitute for the skill, judgment, and experience of the user, its management, employees, advisors, and/or clients when making investment and other business decisions. S&P does not act as a fiduciary or an investment advisor except where registered as such. While S&P has obtained information from sources it believes to be reliable, S&P does not perform an audit and undertakes no duty of due diligence or independent verification of any information it receives. Rating-related publications may be published for a variety of reasons that are not necessarily dependent on action by rating committees, including, but not limited to, the publication of a periodic update on a credit rating and related analyses.
To the extent that regulatory authorities allow a rating agency to acknowledge in one jurisdiction a rating issued in another jurisdiction for certain regulatory purposes, S&P reserves the right to assign, withdraw, or suspend such acknowledgement at any time and in its sole discretion. S&P Parties disclaim any duty whatsoever arising out of the assignment, withdrawal, or suspension of an acknowledgment as well as any liability for any damage alleged to have been suffered on account thereof.
S&P keeps certain activities of its business units separate from each other in order to preserve the independence and objectivity of their respective activities. As a result, certain business units of S&P may have information that is not available to other S&P business units. S&P has established policies and procedures to maintain the confidentiality of certain nonpublic information received in connection with each analytical process.
S&P may receive compensation for its ratings and certain analyses, normally from issuers or underwriters of securities or from obligors. S&P reserves the right to disseminate its opinions and analyses. S&P's public ratings and analyses are made available on its Web sites, www.spglobal.com/ratings (free of charge), and www.ratingsdirect.com (subscription), and may be distributed through other means, including via S&P publications and third-party redistributors. Additional information about our ratings fees is available at www.spglobal.com/usratingsfees.