The financial impact on Australian businesses from CrowdStrike’s IT outage could surpass $1 billion and last for weeks, according to business leaders.

The outage, caused by a faulty software update, grounded planes, closed supermarkets and caused widespread chaos for thousands of organisations and millions of people late last week.

Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neill said “teething issues” stemming from the outage could last “one to two weeks”.

But Australian Industry Group CEO Innes Willox told The Business he expected the damage bill from the glitch to run into the billions of dollars.

“It’s impacted different businesses and different sectors of the economy in wildly different ways, and the reality is we’re going to be seeing the tailpipe of this for weeks to come,” he said.

Mr Willox said it was still unclear whether affected businesses would be able to seek compensation from CrowdStrike for any losses incurred from the outages.

“Whether there might be some federal government scheme in place to help businesses seek redress, or if businesses are going to have to deal directly with CrowdStrike to try to work through compensation through their insurance [is still unclear],” he said.

CrowdStrike’s disaster

Wedbush Securities technology analyst Dan Ives said CrowdStrike had already suffered a huge hit to its brand, which was built on providing cybersecurity.

“There’s brand damage here,” he said.

“This is something that’s going to be going for months, potentially years.

“CrowdStrike now becomes a household name, but not in a good way.” 

Mr Ives expects the company will be dealing with a large volume of legal action in the coming months.