As everyone knows by now, Delta had a massive operational meltdown a couple of weeks ago, whereby over 7,000 flights were canceled, and even more flights were delayed.
While the initial cause of the issues was a faulty CrowdStrike software update, the scale of Delta’s problems was partly due to the company’s lackluster crew scheduling software, which is why Delta recovered so much slower than its competitors.
Delta has tried to do everything it can to avoid taking accountability in this situation and has vowed to sue CrowdStrike to recover the losses from this incident. With Delta having done so much to publicly shame CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity giant is now striking back (as is Microsoft, separately)…
CrowdStrike accuses Delta of misleading narrative
As flagged by @David_Slotnick, legal counsel for CrowdStrike has just sent a letter to Delta’s counsel, accusing the Atlanta-based airline of creating a misleading narrative surrounding the meltdown. I want to share the main part of the letter in full, because, oh my, this is quite something:
CrowdStrike reiterates its apology to Delta, its employees, and its customers, and is emphathetic to the circumstances they faced. However, CrowdStrike is highly disappointed by Delta’s suggestion that CrowdStrike acted inappropriately and strongly rejects any allegations that it was grossly negligent or committed willful misconduct with respect to the Channel File 291 incident. Your suggestion that CrowdStrike failed to do testing and validation is contradicted by the very information on which you rely from CrowdStrike’s Preliminary Post Incident Review.
CrowdStrike worked tirelessly to help its customers restore impacted systems and resume services to their customers. Within hours of the incident, CrowdStrike reached out to Delta to offer assistance and ensure Delta was aware of an available remediation. Additionally, CrowdStrike’s CEO personally reached out to Delta’s CEO to offer onsite assistance, but received no response. CrowdStrike followed up with Delta on the offer for onsite support and was told that the onsite resources were not needed. To this day, CrowdStrike continues to work closely and professionally with the Delta information security team.
Delta’s public threat of litigation distracts from this work and has contributed to a misleading narrative that CrowdStrike is responsible for Delta’s IT decisions and response to the outage. Should Delta pursue this path, Delta will have to explain to the public, its shareholders, and ultimately a jury why CrowdStrike took responsibility for its actions — swiftly, transparently, and constructively — while Delta did not. Among other things, Delta will need to explain:
- Why Delta’s competitors, facing similar challenges, all restored operations much faster.
- Why Delta turned down free onsite help from CrowdStrike, professionally who assisted many other customers to restore operations much more quickly than Delta.
- That any liability by CrowdStrike is contractually capped at an amount in the single-digit millions.
- Every action, or failure to act, by Delta or its third-party service providers, related to the Channel File 291 incident.
- The design and operational resiliency capabilities of Delta’s IT infrastructure, including decisions by Delta with respect to systemwide upgrades, and all other contributory factors that relate in any way to the damage Delta allegedly suffered.
In light of Delta’s July 29 letter, CrowdStrike must also demand that Delta preserve all documents, records, and communications of any kind — including emails, text messages, and other communications — in the possession, custody, or control of Delta, its officers and directors, and employees concerning, but not limited to, the items listed above. As I am sure you can appreciate, while litigation would be unfortunate, CrowdStrike will respond aggressively, if forced to do so, in order to protect its shareholders, employees, and other stakeholders.
My take on CrowdStrike’s response to Delta
I’m (obviously) no legal scholar, and I also don’t know the details of CrowdStrike and Delta’s contract regarding liability for incidents like this.
When we learned that Delta planned to sue CrowdStrike to recover losses from the incident, I was highly skeptical — sure, Delta should get some compensation for the initial meltdown. Still, Delta executives have been acting as if they’ll be made whole, and as if they had no part in all of this.
From an optics standpoint, I’ve gotta say that this CrowdStrike letter is incredibly well written. CrowdStrike backed Delta into a corner here, and if this does go to court, I can’t imagine Delta would end up looking very good:
- Delta would have a heck of a time explaining why it turned down CrowdStrike’s help after the incident
- This would expose how lackluster Delta’s crew scheduling software is, and how the airline underinvested in this
- The communications among Delta executives following the outage sure would be interesting
Suffice it to say that this could get very interesting. It seems likely that Delta and CrowdStrike will settle and split the difference here because I can’t imagine Delta wants all of this to come out. But who knows, since I get the sense that many Delta executives truly believe the airline played no part in this…
Bottom line
CrowdStrike is defending itself against Delta’s claims. CrowdStrike’s legal counsel states that Delta turned down its help after the meltdown, that Delta’s CEO didn’t respond to CrowdStrike’s CEO, and that it’s Delta’s own issues that caused the severity of the meltdown. This should get fun…
What do you make of CrowdStrike’s response to Delta?
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