CrowdStrike shares slightly lower premarket amid Delta lawsuit over summer outage

Investing.com -- Shares in CrowdStrike (NASDAQ:CRWD) pointed marginally lower in premarket US trading on Monday after the cybersecurity firm was sued by Delta Air Lines (NYSE:DAL) over a widespread outage over the summer that led to a thousands of flight cancellations.

The lawsuit, filed in a Georgia state court on Friday, alleged that a faulty systems update from CrowdStrike had been "catastrophic," adding that the group's "untested and faulty updates to its customers" caused over 8.5 million Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) Windows-based computers to crash around the world.

Unlike many of its peers who managed to recover relatively quickly from the outage, Atlanta-based Delta was particularly hard hit by the incident, with the carrier being forced to cancel 7,000 flights over five days in July.

Earlier this month, Delta said the direct financial impact from the outage was approximately $380 million, primarily driven by refunds given to customers in the form of cash and frequent flyer miles. Non-fuel expenses amounted to $170 million, while fuel costs were $50 million lower than they would have been had the flights not been cancelled. Third-quarter per-share profit was also dented by $0.45.

"Because the faulty update could not be removed remotely, CrowdStrike crippled Delta's business and created immense delays for Delta customers," the airline said in its lawsuit.

Amid the fallout from the outage, Delta brought on David Boies of law firm Boies Schiller Flexner to seek damages from both CrowdStrike and Microsoft, including compensation for losses and litigation expenses related to the matter.

In a statement late on Friday cited by Reuters, CrowdStrike said Delta's claims were based on "disproven misinformation" and "demostrate a lack of understanding of how modern cybersecurity works." The lawsuit was a "desperate attempt to shift blame for its slow recovery away from its failure to modernize its antiquated IT infrastructure," CrowdStrike added.

(Reuters contributed reporting.)