CrowdStrike fights back against Delta
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CrowdStrike is fighting back against Delta Air Lines' claims that the cybersecurity vendor didn't provide enough assistance during its recent global IT outage.
Why it matters: How a judge rules in Delta's lawsuit against CrowdStrike could set a precedent for other companies that choose to take legal action over the outage.
Driving the news: Delta CEO Ed Bastian told CNBC last week that the outage cost the airline $500 million and forced it to cancel more than 5,000 flights.
- CrowdStrike has said that faulty content data in a configuration update is what caused the July 19 global IT outage that brought a "Blue Screen of Death" to millions of Windows computers.
- Delta filed a lawsuit against CrowdStrike last week, and Bastian claimed that CrowdStrike had made zero offers to help the company financially.
Zoom in: On Sunday, CrowdStrike's outside legal counsel sent a letter to Delta saying the company "strongly rejects any allegation that it was grossly negligent or committed willful misconduct."
- "Within hours of the incident, CrowdStrike reached out to Delta to offer assistance and ensure Delta was aware of an available remediation," the letter says.
- "Additionally, CrowdStrike's CEO personally reached out to Delta's CEO to offer onsite assistance, but received no response."
Between the lines: The fallout from the outage has started a wider conversation about how companies can strengthen their network resilience — and whose responsibility it is to ensure companies aren't as vulnerable to a similar outage in the future.
- Delta is arguing it was CrowdStrike's responsibility to ensure its internal processes were ironclad against a network outage of this scale, while CrowdStrike argues it was Delta's responsibility to have backup plans in place.
