PUTRAJAYA: Digital Minister Gobind Singh wants Microsoft to listen to the people who have lost money due to the worldwide IT outage linked to global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike Holdings Inc, an American cybersecurity technology company based in Austin, Texas, that provides endpoint protection, threat intelligence and cyberattack response services.
This includes compensation claims by Capital A Sdn Bhd chief executive officer Tan Sri Tony Fernandes who said recently that he felt Microsoft should compensate companies that were affected by the outages last week.
Gobind said there were nine private companies from the banking, airlines and healthcare sectors that were affected by the outages and in a press conference today mentioned he had already met with representatives from Microsoft and Tony himself.
He did not mention who they were.
“I’ve discussed the matter with Tony and Microsoft and the latter is in the process of preparing a comprehensive report for us to view as well. As for the claims from Tony they should listen to what the request is and listen to their reasons.
“Those who were affected by this deserve their reasons to be heard and once we have a report let’s see what to do. Meanwhile we have reports of people experiencing financial losses. I implore all the agencies involved to please try your best to help those who were affected by this financially.
“Let’s find an amicable way to fix this problem and we will start thinking about how to facilitate data sharing and how to make sure it is secure. We still encourage everyone to go digital. We will ensure the infrastructure is up to date to make sure we pull the laws up to mark,” he said today during a press conference at the Digital Ministry in Putrajaya.
Yesterday, Tony said he felt Air Asia needed to be compensated by Microsoft following the global IT outage. He said he would 100 per cent ask for compensation as if the situation were reversed and flights were cancelled Air Asia would be liable for compensation from passengers.
Following the incident CrowdStrike said they were actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. The issue had been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed, its CEO George Kurtz said in a message on social media platform X on July 19.
