Parametrix

We reasoned that Parametrix could provide unparalleled insights into the financial impact of the CrowdStrike catastrophe based on its real-time monitoring of 6,000 technology businesses, 

including a significant portion of the Fortune 500.

Our pitch to the client was urgent, with three PR goals:

• Communicate the scope of the CrowdStrike catastrophe while the news is still fresh.
• Educate journalists about the nature of the problem so they understand, as our dependence on technology increases and coalesces around single points and providers, these events can and will happen again.
• Make the case that enterprises must protect themselves with technologies such as Parametrix.

Three days after the CrowdStrike disaster was first reported, Bospar cemented an agreement with the client and immediately started outreach!

Bospar began by reviewing 54 billion data points, and quickly realized that we needed to focus on a smaller data set! We chose to focus on the Fortune 500 because this group of companies is a key driver of the global economy. 

About 25% of Fortune 500 companies experienced disruptions due to the CrowdStrike outage. The most heavily impacted industries were airlines, healthcare and banking. 

Parametrix estimated a total loss of $5.4 billion for the Fortune 500. Insured losses were expected to fall between $540 million and $1.08 billion, representing 10% to 20% of the total financial loss. That left companies with the brunt of the fiscal damage.

The breaking nature of this story demanded agility in our media approach. The first wave of stories would describe the scope of the damage caused by the outage. Parametrix’s numbers would be critical. 

However, new angles would emerge, such as discovering what caused the outage, stock market performance and even a cringeworthy moment where CrowdStrike tried apologizing to its customers by giving them a $10 Uber Eats voucher.

Our research would add color to each narrative. We approached each vertical, including the airline, banking, cybersecurity, insurance and healthcare media, with a customized narrative for each particular audience. 

On top of that, we had a more enduring technical story to tell: This is just the beginning; it will happen again. The ideal opportunity for such a narrative would arrive near the end of the news cycle, when journalists would have time to examine the lessons learned from this fiasco. 

We needed to explain to reporters that when a critical component within a tightly bundled solution experiences downtime or fails, it can trigger a cascade of disruptions throughout the entire system. 

But that’s not all. We needed to set new expectations for the industry. Enterprises should start demanding downtime insurance as a standard offering, especially for critical services like cybersecurity.