In short:
Australian businesses say the damage bill from CrowdStrike's outage could surpass $1 billion.
Government and business leaders say the impact of the outage will be felt for weeks to come.
What's next?
Businesses are exploring their legal options for seeking compensation from CrowdStrike.
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.
"I think if you're a CrowdStrike lawyer, you're not really seeing a beach the rest of the summer," he said.
The massive and widespread chaos unleashed by a simple update gone wrong might see businesses change how they engage with the software they licence, according to Ajay Unni, the founder of cybersecurity firm Stickman Cyber.
"We as users can also enhance our testing, in some instances," he said.
"It's not practical always to test every single patch and update.
But if it's a major, major patch or major update, then I would imagine we will change our processes to ensure that things are tested before they are rolled out."
Family stuck in Bali
The personal cost to individuals caught up in the chaos of last Friday's outage is also running high.
Oncology nurse Felicity Sims and her family remain stranded in Bali following their Jetstar flights being cancelled.
So far they are about $2,000 out of pocket, facing a week of missed work and unable to get their children back to school on time.
"It was stressful," Ms Sims said.
"We had already checked out of our accommodation and had to find more.
"There's a reasonable time which if a flight is cancelled that you might be delayed, but a seven-day delay is not reasonable."
So far, Jetstar has offered affected customers free flight moves and refunds for their tickets.
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