Insights on CrowdStrike's Response to July's Global IT Meltdown

CrowdStrike Executive to Testify on Global IT Outage Impact

A senior CrowdStrike executive will testify before the House Homeland Security Committee next month about the IT outage that grounded planes and workplaces to a halt globally on July 19th.

Adam Meyers, CrowdStrike’s senior vice president of counter adversary operations, has agreed to appear before the panel on September 24th at 2PM ET, the committee announced. Committee leaders had previously called on CEO George Kurtz to testify, but he’s not currently listed as a witness.

In a statement, Committee Chair Mark Green (R-TN) stated that while he’d hoped Kurtz could attend, “I look forward to hearing testimony from Mr. Meyers, who CrowdStrike assured was the appropriate witness to discuss the details of the outage. Americans deserve to know in detail how this incident happened and the mitigation CrowdStrike is taking to avoid the cascading impacts of outages like this across sectors.”

Green emphasized that the flawed software update impacted 8.5 million Windows machines, demonstrating the urgency of promoting cyber hygiene and resiliency amid increased threats. He noted that the growing reliance on interconnected IT systems has expanded the risk surface.

Andrew Garbarino (R-NY), chair of the subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection, remarked that the hearing would provide an important opportunity to learn about the steps CrowdStrike took post-outage to prevent a recurrence. He pointed out that although the outage wasn’t the result of a cyberattack, adversaries likely observed the incident to understand how a flawed software update can trigger cascading effects on critical infrastructure.