Last week's power outage affected the global economy, and CrowdStrike (CRWD.US) CEO George Kurtz was called to testify before the U.S. Congress, with Wedbush Securities calling the testimony "a key event" for the company.
Analysts at Wedbush said, "This will be a key event for Kurtz and CrowdStrike, as Congress and Washington are ready to focus on the global dark side of the CrowdStrike story."
It was reported that CrowdStrike updated the outage to have affected 85 million Windows-based PCs on Friday. The outage caused thousands of flights to be canceled and affected telecom, banking and logistics sectors. On Monday, the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee called on Kurtz to testify before Congress about the major IT outage.
In a letter to Kurtz, U.S. House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green wrote, "In less than a day, we saw critical functions of the global economy impacted, including aviation, healthcare, banking, media and emergency services... While we appreciate CrowdStrike's response and coordination with stakeholders, we cannot ignore the severity of the event, with some claiming it to be the largest IT outage in history."
CrowdStrike shares were down 1% at the open, and have fallen more than 30% since the outage.