CrowdStrike, the troubled IT security firm whose bug-ridden software update crashed computers running on Windows operating systems worldwide in July, says it wants to meet with Delta Air Lines to find a ‘resolution’ following a war of words between the two companies.
Delta has blamed CrowdStrike for an embarrassing and highly damaging operational meltdown that engulfed the Atlanta-based carrier in the wake of the IT outage and has demanded hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation from CrowdStrike.
In an SEC filing earlier this month, Delta revealed that the outage and resulting meltdown cost the airline around $500 million, and the airline wants CrowdStrike to foot the entire bill.
Over the last few weeks, a war of words has broken out between CrowdStrike and Delta over who exactly was to blame for the operational meltdown and, therefore, how much of Delta’s bill that CrowdStrike is responsible for footing.
CrowdStrike has publicly stated that its liability should be capped in the “single digit” millions, leading Delta to hire a “premier law firm” with significant litigation experience in an attempt to get CrowdStrike to cover all its losses.
The two sides have seemed pretty far apart on this issue but on Thursday, CrowdStrike’s CEO George Kurtz told CNBC that the company was now hoping to meet with Delta and thrash out a resolution.
“If, you know, folks could sit down, have a business conversation around this and try to come to a resolution, obviously we’re open to that,” Kurtz told CNBC. “Delta’s a customer, and like any customer, you want to try to get this resolved in the, in the most expeditious way, and we’re certainly willing and open to do that.”
CrowdStrike admits that it automatically sent a software update to its users on July 19 which, unbeknown to the company, was riddled with bugs that ‘bricked’ computers running Microsoft Windows or Azure.
Delta says around 37,000 computers were affected by the bug, and in the hours and days that followed, CrowdStrike offered very little support—a claim that CrowdStrike has outright rejected.
In fact, not only does CrowdStrike say it offered to get Delta’s IT infrastructure back up and running, but it has also been claimed that Delta rejected support because the real cause of its IT woes was a legacy system that wasn’t running on Windows.
The debacle and the fact that other airlines were so quick to recover from the update bug has raised questions over whether Delta has invested enough in its IT system in recent years.
Delta, however, contests that it has invested significant sums in its technology and that it shouldn’t take the blame for an issue caused by what was once a trusted third-party supplier.
