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The global outage that took down computers all over the world and interrupted air travel is a "major black eye" for cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike (NASDAQ:CRWD), Wedbush Securities said.
In turn, it could lead to an opportunity for competitors to take advantage, the research firm added.
CrowdStrike shares were down 14% in early trading on Friday after the company said a fix was being deployed.
"This is clearly a major black eye for CrowdStrike and the stock will be under pressure after this global outage related to Microsoft has caused massive disruption globally," analyst Dan Ives wrote in an investor note. "This is a technical update and importantly not a hack/cyber security threat which would be more worrying. CrowdStrike has a strong brand and global marketing presence which will need to go into next gear over the coming weeks and months to curtail some damage from this."
While it will take some time for the issues to settle down, it does not change Wedbush's positive view of CrowdStrike or the broader cybersecurity industry, Ives added.
Door open?
While CrowdStrike's issue impacted global companies and customers, it could create an opportunity for other cybersecurity firms to take advantage, Ives posited.
"It could create opportunity for some competitive displacements but this will take time to determine the path of CIOs and companies looking ahead and related legal actions related to this outage," Ives explained.
Ives did not name any specific cybersecurity companies he thought could take advantage. However, shares of competitors, such as Palo Alto Networks (PANW), Fortinet (FTNT) and a few others were higher in early trading, including SentinelOne (S), which rose more than 8.5%.
For Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), which has also been at the heart of the story — given it impacted Windows machines — it is less of an issue, but still a "PR nightmare" for both companies, Ives said.
Microsoft shares fell 1.4% in early trading.
(This story has been updated to include further share price moves.)