Comms head Frank Shaw defends Microsoft after CrowdStrike global outage

Shaw told PRWeek that his first priority was getting out accurate information that explained the cause of the issue and provided context about the scope, as many more people saw news of the outage than were affected by it.

“We didn’t cause it but our customers were affected,” he said. 

On Saturday, Microsoft shared a blog post outlining its efforts to restore systems. The following day, the company released a recovery tool designed to help IT workers repair Windows devices affected by the update.

After explaining the issue to the masses, Shaw said that his second priority was ensuring that reporters covering it were doing so accurately. Some of that effort took place publically, but much of it occurred behind the scenes, he said. 

He also stated that the outage is a complicated issue that’s difficult for people who aren’t engineers to understand. Some attributed it to vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s software security, though Shaw maintained that the security issue lied with a vendor, not Microsoft itself. 

A defect in a Windows content update from software company CrowdStrike caused the outage, according to CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz, who posted on Friday that a fix was deployed and that customers should communicate with CrowdStrike representatives through official channels. 

Shaw also confirmed that a CrowdStrike update brought down Windows systems globally, and that Microsoft was supporting customers in recovering operations

While many lambasted CrowdStrike for the error, others stated that Microsoft failed to show empathy, despite the issue not directly stemming from the company.

Jeremy Tunis, PR and stakeholder engagement advisor at Lyssn AI, said in a LinkedIn post that Kurtz’s statement is “missing is any clear contrition” and “commitment to conduct an investigation to figure out what happened,” while Microsoft’s statement is “severely lacking on empathy, scale awareness and steps they are taking to make lives better for their customers.”

Systems across transportation, healthcare, business operations and emergency services were rendered inoperable, causing planes to sit idly in airports and medical procedures to be delayed. 

On Friday, Kurtz made a second X post, stating “We understand the gravity of the situation and are deeply sorry for the inconvenience and disruption. We are working with all impacted customers to ensure that systems are back up and they can deliver the services their customers are counting on.”

A third post from Kurtz read “As this incident is resolved, you have my commitment to provide full transparency on how this occurred and the steps we’re taking to prevent anything like this from happening again.”

On Sunday, CrowdStrike posted “Of the approximately 8.5 million Windows devices that were impacted, a significant number are back online and operational.”

Social media users, communicators and business leaders largely criticized Kurtz’s initial statement as overly corporate and failing to apologize and take accountability for the error.

CrowdStrike CEO is getting pummeled for his response to the global outage.

Why everyone hates it:

1) WEAPONS-GRADE CORPO SPEAK

Let’s be clear. Legalese doublespeak is designed to dodge and obfuscate rather than inform or communicate. This statement was obviously written by a… pic.twitter.com/oLua908QR2

— Lulu Cheng Meservey (@lulumeservey) July 19, 2024

Translation from corporate-speak:

“CrowdStrike broke your business today but please remember YOU are the problem - not us. We won’t provide any helpful information here. Remember: You should actually be apologizing to us for using computers in your business. Awwwwwww boo hoo -…

— Chris Bakke (@ChrisJBakke) July 19, 2024

Missing we screwed up and we are sorry

— David Hajek (@hajekd) July 19, 2024

Businesses also took to social media to communicate how the outage affected them.

A major worldwide software outage has affected many of our systems at Mass General Brigham, as well as many major businesses across the country. Due to the severity of this issue, all previously scheduled non-urgent surgeries, procedures, and medical visits are cancelled today. pic.twitter.com/atf4WhuD2c

— Mass General Brigham (@MassGenBrigham) July 19, 2024