CrowdStrike’s President Accepting the ‘Most Epic Fail’ Award in Person was a PR Masterclass, Experts Say
By Shubhangi Goel for Business Insider
CrowdStrike’s president himself just collected an award for the “most epic fail” following the company’s mass IT outage.
The cybersecurity firm’s president, Michael Sentonas, said he wanted to receive the award in person because the company aimed to own its mistake.
“I want every CrowdStriker who comes to work to see it,” Sentonas said while collecting the trophy. “Because, you know, our goal is to protect people, and we got this wrong and I want to make sure that everybody understands these things can’t happen.”
The award was presented on Saturday night at the Pwnie Awards, an annual award ceremony for cybersecurity professionals.
The ignominious accolade follows an outage last month in which CrowdStrike disrupted businesses globally after a defect in a software update from the cybersecurity firm caused many thousands of Microsoft computer systems to shut down.
Sentonas’ short speech elicited applause and laughter from the audience, and communications experts told Business Insider that accepting the award graciously was the right move.
One crisis-communications expert said that showing up in person helped the company signal that it’s still committed to transparency and accountability.
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