Microsoft To Host Cybersecurity Summit After CrowdStrike IT Outage

Microsoft is host a summit next month to discuss ways to improve cybersecurity systems,following the huge IT outage last month.

The software giant announced it will host a “Windows Endpoint Security Ecosystem Summit at our Redmond, Washington, headquarters,” on 10 September 2024. The summit will include CrowdStrike and other key partners who deliver endpoint security technologies to customers around the world.

It comes after a faulty update from Texas-based cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike had triggered the world’s largest ever IT outage on 19 July.

IT outage

The flawed software update disrupted airlines, banks, hospitals, emergency lines and countless business operations around the world.

CrowdStrike’s CEO George Kurtz apologised on multiple occasions when it became clear that a faulty content configuration update for CrowdStrike’s Falcon sensor tool had plunged an estimated 8.5 million Windows computers into a ‘Bue Screen Of Death’ reboot loop.

CrowdStrike’s share price fell 32 percent over the next 12 days, wiping out $25 billion of market value, as the outage’s effects became known.

A month later, CrowdStrike eventually ended up losing about $9 billion of its market value from the outage.

Delta Air Lines is seeking $500 million in damages, and CrowdStrike itself is being sued by its shareholders who allege the firm defrauded them by concealing how its inadequate software testing could cause the global disruption.

Endpoint security summit

Now Redmond is to host a summit to thrash out ways to improve cybersecurity systems.

“Microsoft, CrowdStrike and key partners who deliver endpoint security technologies will come together for discussions about improving resiliency and protecting mutual customers’ critical infrastructure,” said the software giant. “Our objective is to discuss concrete steps we will all take to improve security and resiliency for our joint customers.”

“The CrowdStrike outage in July 2024 presents important lessons for us to apply as an ecosystem,” it added. “Our discussions will focus on improving security and safe deployment practices, designing systems for resiliency and working together as a thriving community of partners to best serve customers now, and in the future.”

In addition to ecosystem partners, Microsoft said it would invite government representatives to ensure the highest level of transparency.

It added that Microsoft expects the summit to “lead to next steps in both short- and long-term actions and initiatives to pursue, with improved security and resilience as our collective goal. We will share further updates on these conversations following the event.”

The summit is the first significant step by Microsoft following the IT outage.

“We look forward to bringing our perspective to the discussions with Microsoft and industry and government stakeholders on the need for a more resilient ecosystem,” a CrowdStrike spokesperson told Reuters.

At the time of writing, the names and number of other organisations attending the summit has not been released.