Shares in CrowdStrike Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:CRWD) tumbled another 8% in early trading on Monday, down over 18% since the company's technical update led to a worldwide IT meltdown on Friday.
Issues stemming from the mass-scale IT outage issues were reported to be persisting in many corners of the globe on Monday.
This is "not good news" for CrowdStrike management, said analyst Dan Ives at Wedbush, as "in an already bad situation as it appears a number of businesses are still finding difficulty on the path to normalization from this IT outage despite fixes/mediations released throughout the weekend".
However, a quick technical update from the company and remediation efforts have allowed customers to resolve most issues over the weekend.
But the cause of the biggest IT outage in history will be a focal point for "CrowdStrike, Microsoft, the cyber security industry, and likely many other areas including the Beltway and lawyers/legal circles over the coming weeks and months", Ives wrote.
He noted CrowdStrike "remains the gold standard" and this incident should only be a "dark chapter for the company and not impact the long term bull story for the name although this is a critical week ahead to get things resolved".
As for Microsoft, the cyber meltdown is "less of an issue", according to Ives, as despite the Windows computers around the world being hit by the "blue screen of death", this was all related to this update from CrowdStrike.
"We also believe this could spur Microsoft to look more aggressively at cyber security M&A which has always been on the edges especially with Google potentially acquiring Wiz coupled by this turmoil seen over the last day.
"In a nutshell, this is a PR nightmare for CrowdStrike and a big week is ahead to get this fully resolved otherwise the brand damage will persist."