CrowdStrike outage raises questions about Windows ‘perceived vulnerability:’ Citi

Last week’s widespread outage caused by a bad update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike (NASDAQ:CRWD) had significant impacts across the globe and raised the question if the “perceived vulnerabilities” for Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) Windows operating system are true, Citi said.

“Overall, we see limited financial impacts to MSFT (especially relative to CRWD), though we also note MSFT may still have to deal with negative perception around perceived vulnerabilities to its Operating System, with public hearings in the coming days and additional investigation by the FTC,” analyst Tyler Radke wrote in an investor note. Radke has a Buy rating and $520 price target on Microsoft.

The outage resulted in the dreaded “blue screen of death” for many PCs around the world, as CrowdStrike has “low-level kernel-level access” to Windows. However, the outage did not impact Mac (AAPL) computers or those that run the Linux operating system, as each operating system has differing kernel-level access policies.

And while the differences are well known amongst the IT community, the outage could raise more perceived concerns for Windows, Radke said.

“Ultimately, we don’t expect this event will materially damage the Windows OS share, but may raise more perceived vulnerability concerns,” Rake explained.