CrowdStrike's cost to Fortune 500 is $5.4 billion

Following a disruption last week caused by Austin, Texas-based CrowdStrike, which provides cybersecurity services to Microsoft, an outage occurred that affected many businesses worldwide, particularly airlines.

While the effects of the software issue are still ongoing for some companies, Parametrix estimated that the total direct financial loss faced by US Fortune 500 companies, excluding Microsoft, due to this issue is $5.4 billion.

According to the company's analysis, 125 of the companies in the Fortune 500 were affected by the software issue. This impact was seen in all airline companies and 43 percent of retail companies, while approximately three-quarters of firms in the healthcare and banking sectors were exposed to direct costs.

$44 MILLION PER COMPANY

The portion of the $5.4 billion loss incurred by Fortune 500 companies that is covered under cyber insurance policies will not exceed 10 to 20 percent, due to high risk retention rates and low policy limits relative to potential outage losses for many companies.

While the weighted average loss is $44 million per Fortune 500 company, this figure ranges from $6 million to $143 million for manufacturing and airline companies.

Fortune 500 companies in the healthcare sector are expected to face the largest direct financial loss due to the global software issue, with the total reaching $1.94 billion.

This sector is followed by banking with $1.15 billion, while the issue is estimated to have cost the six airline companies within the Fortune 500 $860 million.

The annual revenue of the companies within the Fortune 500 that were affected by the global software issue in the healthcare, banking, transportation-airline, software and internet technology, retail, finance, and manufacturing sectors stands at $2.24 trillion.