Bankinter | A flaw in an update to its Falcon platform has caused incidents worldwide on Windows-based devices. The company has acknowledged that the security patch installed in the early hours of Thursday to Friday morning was the cause of failures when logging on to Windows devices, locking them, displaying the blue screen of death (BSOD) and preventing a reboot.
CrowdStrike has also confirmed that it is close to being able to implement an automatic fix for the problem, which would speed up the start-up of all affected systems.
Opinion of the Bankinter analysis team: Given the impossibility of estimating the real scope of this incident and the serious consequences for companies in various sectors (tourism, banking…), we remove CrowdStrike from our list of preferred stocks within cybersecurity. The company’s reputational damage is difficult to quantify at present, but the negative impact will be prolonged in the short term. Not to mention the possibility of compensation and legal proceedings. The fact that this incident is isolated to CrowdStrike makes us keep cybersecurity as one of our preferred sectors, although there are two companies that could particularly benefit from this event:
(i) SENTINELONE (Close: $21.72; Var. Day: +7.9%; Var. 2024: -20.9%): it is one of its main competitors (albeit smaller) within endpoint security (remote computing terminals/devices that communicate with the network to which they are connected: mobiles, tablets, laptops, …), also integrating artificial intelligence through its Singularity platform.
(ii) PALO ALTO (Closing: $330.89; Var. Day: +2.2%; Var. 2024: +12.2%): Leading provider, by market share, within the sector. It has the advantage of having solutions in several areas of cybersecurity: next-generation firewall protection, endpoint security and cloud protection.CROWDSTRIKE (Closing: $304.96; Var. Day: -11.1%; Var. 2024: +19.4%).
