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Delta CEO Ed Bastian said last week the outage had cost the U.S.
airline $500 million and that it planned to take legal action to
get compensation from the cybersecurity firm.
CrowdStrike reiterated its apology to the airline operator, but
said in a letter from an external lawyer that it is "highly
disappointed by Delta's suggestion that CrowdStrike acted
inappropriately and strongly rejects any allegation that it was
grossly negligent or committed misconduct."
Delta canceled more than 6,000 flights over a six-day period,
impacting more than 500,000 passengers. It faces a U.S.
Transportation Department investigation into why it took so much
longer for it to recover from the outage than other airlines.
The CrowdStrike letter said that "any liability by CrowdStrike
is contractually capped at an amount in the single-digit
millions."
Delta declined to comment on the CrowdStrike letter.
Within hours of the outage incident, CrowdStrike reached out to
Delta to offer assistance.
"Additionally, CrowdStrike’s CEO personally reached out to
Delta’s CEO to offer onsite assistance, but received no
response," the letter said.
Bastian told CNBC last week CrowdStrike had offered "free
consulting advice to help us."
Delta told U.S. lawmakers last week in a letter seen by Reuters
that CrowdStrike’s faulty update "impacted more than half of
Delta computers, including many of Delta’s workstations at every
airport in the Delta network."
The letter added Delta's "complex IT system which distributes
and synchronizes all our data, including the data that feeds our
crew tracking and gating software, required manual recovery."
The CrowdStrike letter added that if Delta files suit, it will
need to answer "why Delta’s competitors, facing similar
challenges, all restored operations much faster" and "why Delta
turned down free onsite help from CrowdStrike professionals who
assisted many other customers to restore operations much more
quickly than Delta."
A CrowdStrike spokesperson said "public posturing about
potentially bringing a meritless lawsuit against CrowdStrike as
a long-time partner is not constructive to any party. We hope
that Delta will agree to work cooperatively to find a
resolution."
(Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington and Akanksha Khushi
in Bengaluru; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips and Miral Fahmy)
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