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Delta sued Crowdstrike in George court for $500mil in actual damages for having to cancel over 7,000 flights over the five day period that its IT systems were kaput, plus punitive reputational damages.
Crowdstrike says its terms of service limits recovery to 2x the fees you pay for the product. Which I suspect is a bit less than $500mil.
The problem is that pretty much every other IT org IN THE WORLD were able to recover their systems within a day, and both Microsoft and Crowdstrike offered to help Delta recover their systems at their own expense. The PRESIDENT of Microsoft couldn't get his calls returned from Delta for THREE DAYS, and the response was 'Nah, we're good'.
Those facts are going to weigh very heavily against Delta in court.
The basic problem is one that's not uncommon in IT: the corporation apparently has been cheap in keeping their IT infrastructure up to date. Old hardware, old versions of software, and likely IT staff who weren't as good at their jobs as they should have been for a company as big as Delta seems to have been the reason the recovery process dragged on for so long. And all of that is going to come out in court, and when it does, I expect the revelation of that soft white underbelly to really drive down their stock price. It doesn't matter how big an airline is, there's always room for the stock price to crash.
Yes, Crowdstrike made mistakes. And Delta probably has some valid claims to make. But to refuse free offers of assistance from both Microsoft and Crowdstrike? No one in their right mind would do that, and a jury is really going to question the rationality of the IT directors and C-Suite minds who said no.
It's possible that Delta may win the suite. But they might get a token amount, like $10. Or the TOS stipulation of twice the cost of the software. Regardless, all their bad practices will be revealed and that will be a topic of discussion at the next shareholder meeting.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/10/crowdstrike-accuses-delta-of-blaming-its-own-it-failures-on-global-outage/
The amusing bit is that Delta did not name Microsoft in the suit, nor sue Microsoft separately. It seems that MS told Delta that they would defend themselves vigorously, and told Delta to preserve all documentation regarding the state of their system, what software, operating systems and versions they use, all communications regarding this incident, etc. Microsoft has an extremely good legal team and would have no problem saying in court "Look, we offered to help. You said no. Why are you suing us?"
Crowdstrike says its terms of service limits recovery to 2x the fees you pay for the product. Which I suspect is a bit less than $500mil.
The problem is that pretty much every other IT org IN THE WORLD were able to recover their systems within a day, and both Microsoft and Crowdstrike offered to help Delta recover their systems at their own expense. The PRESIDENT of Microsoft couldn't get his calls returned from Delta for THREE DAYS, and the response was 'Nah, we're good'.
Those facts are going to weigh very heavily against Delta in court.
The basic problem is one that's not uncommon in IT: the corporation apparently has been cheap in keeping their IT infrastructure up to date. Old hardware, old versions of software, and likely IT staff who weren't as good at their jobs as they should have been for a company as big as Delta seems to have been the reason the recovery process dragged on for so long. And all of that is going to come out in court, and when it does, I expect the revelation of that soft white underbelly to really drive down their stock price. It doesn't matter how big an airline is, there's always room for the stock price to crash.
Yes, Crowdstrike made mistakes. And Delta probably has some valid claims to make. But to refuse free offers of assistance from both Microsoft and Crowdstrike? No one in their right mind would do that, and a jury is really going to question the rationality of the IT directors and C-Suite minds who said no.
It's possible that Delta may win the suite. But they might get a token amount, like $10. Or the TOS stipulation of twice the cost of the software. Regardless, all their bad practices will be revealed and that will be a topic of discussion at the next shareholder meeting.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/10/crowdstrike-accuses-delta-of-blaming-its-own-it-failures-on-global-outage/
The amusing bit is that Delta did not name Microsoft in the suit, nor sue Microsoft separately. It seems that MS told Delta that they would defend themselves vigorously, and told Delta to preserve all documentation regarding the state of their system, what software, operating systems and versions they use, all communications regarding this incident, etc. Microsoft has an extremely good legal team and would have no problem saying in court "Look, we offered to help. You said no. Why are you suing us?"
