In an effort to go around the terms of the two firms’ contract, CrowdStrike sought Monday night to dismiss Delta Air Lines’ lawsuit on the July cybersecurity failure that resulted in canceled flights and stranded passengers.
The cybersecurity service claims that Delta is currently attempting to circumvent a provision in the agreement between CrowdStrike and Delta that limits CrowdStrike’s liability and caps damages. In its filing, CrowdStrike further contended that Georgia law prohibits Delta from turning a contract violation into a tort.
First, according to CrowdStrike, Delta’s attempts to pursue tort claims for the economic harm it alleges to have sustained are specifically barred by Georgia’s economic loss rule.
According to Delta, the firm lost almost $500 million in delayed flights, reimbursements, and customer accommodations as a result of the July cybersecurity disruption. Through the lawsuit, it hopes to recover those expenses from CrowdStrike. However, neither the impact of a Department of Transportation inquiry into Delta for the outage nor the harm done to the airline’s reputation as a premium carrier can yet be measured.
After the downtime, Delta still uses CrowdStrike services, probably because switching cybersecurity suppliers is very challenging for systems as big and complex as Delta’s.
Nevertheless, CrowdStrike said that it acted swiftly to assist Delta after their proposals, which the cybersecurity firm claims were rejected. According to a message from a Delta executive that CrowdStrike reported, “We are good for now.” According to the cybersecurity firm, on the day of the outage, executives were in close communication.
CrowdStrike noted that Delta consistently rejected any help from the company or its partners.
CrowdStrike goes on to say that, in contrast to other industry peers who recovered from the outage far faster, Delta’s own procedures and systems were the cause of the extensive delays and cancellations.
Delta was an anomaly. In their submission, CrowdStrike said that although Delta admits that it only took hours rather than days for its staff to fix the issue, the number of cancellations vastly outstripped the flight interruptions that its competitors faced.
Following the outage, the stock of the cybersecurity company fell 44%. Even after reducing its guidance as a result of the incident, it has since mostly recovered from those losses and reported solid quarterly earnings. The relative stickiness of CrowdStrike’s products has aided the company, particularly at large businesses.
There was no quick response from a Delta representative.
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