The cybersecurity provider CrowdStrike is under pressure following a severe software update that led to a global IT outage in July. President Michael Sentonas criticized the efforts of competing companies to exploit this incident to gain market share, describing their actions as "questionable.

Sentonas emphasized that no software is completely immune to similar incidents and criticized rivals for undermining trust in the cybersecurity industry with "shady" comments. These reactions followed the incident that affected 8.5 million Windows devices worldwide and severely damaged companies like Delta Air Lines. Delta estimates the financial loss at 500 million USD and is considering legal action against CrowdStrike.

Competitors like SentinelOne and Trellix took advantage of the outage to promote their own products and blamed CrowdStrike for design and testing flaws. Tomer Weingarten, CEO of SentinelOne, pointed to "poor design choices" and a "risky architecture" at CrowdStrike, which he believes led to the outage.

The incident led to a significant drop in CrowdStrike's share price, which has since lost about a quarter of its value. In contrast, the shares of competitors such as SentinelOne and Palo Alto Networks rose.

Despite the criticism, CrowdStrike plans to continue operating in the core area of the operating system, the so-called kernel, to ensure maximum security. Sentonas emphasized that this approach is necessary to provide comprehensive protection against cyber threats.