Delta Air Lines filed a lawsuit against cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike nearly six months after a buggy software update in July brought massive cancellations of its flights that left 1.3 million passengers out and had incurred the company over half a billion dollars in damages.
Delta Air Lines is suing CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity service, following a disastrous software update last July that forced the airline to cancel more than 7,000 flights and strand 1.3 million passengers, leaving the carrier with over $500 million in costs.
Delta filed the case against CrowdStrike in the Georgia Fulton County Superior Court for allegedly releasing an untested and defective upgrade that crashed millions of machines worldwide.
The banking, healthcare, and media sectors were also said to be affected by the downtime.
CrowdStrike, though responds that Delta is even much to blame for their having the most antique IT setup. “Delta’s assertions were based on false information, and it reflects lack of knowledge about contemporary cyber threats.”
The company calls upon reason as to why in other airlines the problem remained less frequent and also made known that its blame game has been low.
Delta answered by saying that it has spent billions in modernizing its technological infrastructure and that the fault is all CrowdStrike since it was due to a software malfunction. The U.S. Transportation Department has opened an investigation on the case.
Last month, a senior executive at CrowdStrike, Adam Meyers, apologized before Congress, saying the rollout was flawed and promising not to let similar problems happen again.
But Delta is unbowed in its insistence on damages, legal costs, and reputational losses.
The case is likely going to set a precedent about the way airlines and cybersecurity firms share responsibility in a very rapidly interconnected digital environment day in and day out.
