CrowdStrike outage puts Paris Olympics IT partner Atos in the spotlight

By James Rogers

The CrowdStrike outage underlines the importance of one Paris Olympics partner, says branding expert Jim Andrews

The massive CrowdStrike Holdings outage, which may be the largest ever, has underlined the critical importance of one of the lesser-known partners of the Paris Olympic Games, according to branding expert Jim Andrews.

French information-technology giant Atos SE (FR:ATO) has been the Olympics' worldwide IT partner since 2001, and the company's services will underpin the Paris Games. "They are behind the scenes," said Andrews, the founder and CEO of A-Mark Partnership Strategies, noting that Atos is not as well-known as consumer-facing Olympic partners such as Coca-Cola Co. (KO), Visa Inc. (V) and Toyota Motor Corp. (JP:7203).

"They may be the most important of all given that they have to protect the Olympic systems," Andrews said. "All the tech infrastructure is under their purview."

Related: Airlines grounded, some banks and retailers see outages tied to CrowdStrike issue

"They will be more in the spotlight now than perhaps they ever have been," he added.

The Olympic partner programme is the highest level of Olympic sponsorship, according to the International Olympic Committee.

Friday's outage, linked to cybersecurity company CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. (CRWD), caused widespread disruption to Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) systems worldwide, affecting airlines, banks and many other companies. The outage was not caused by a security or hacking incident, CrowdStrike Chief Executive George Kurtz said Friday. The issue, which was related to an update to CrowdStrike's Falcon technology on Windows, has been identified, with a fix deployed, he said. In a statement Sunday evening, CrowdStrike said that, of the approximately 8.5 million Windows devices impacted by the outage, "a significant number" are back online and operational.

Related: CrowdStrike's stock falls sharply as outage could be world's largest ever

The CrowdStrike issue also affected the Paris Olympics Organizing Committee, Reuters reports, although its impact was limited. Ticket sales were unaffected, the report said.

In a statement released Friday afternoon, the Paris Olympics Organizing Committee said all of the games' operations were running normally, noting that the global IT issue "temporarily affected a limited number of our own IT services."

"Consequently, our accreditation centres have been able to resume operations," the Paris Olympics Organizing Committee added. "The Uniform and Accreditation Centre in Paris is open again."

Related: Hospitals, 911 systems scramble to respond to CrowdStrike issues

Atos has not yet responded to a request for comment.

The Paris Olympics kick off on July 26 and end on Aug. 11, while the Paralympic Games start on Aug. 28 and end on Sep. 8.

-James Rogers

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07-22-24 0721ET

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