CrowdStrike sued Delta after a widespread IT outage that resulted in thousands of cancellations.

• CrowdStrike's security software caused an IT outage resulting in over $500 million in losses for Delta, prompting the airline to seek damages, litigation costs, and punitive damages.
• Despite disabling automatic updates, CrowdStrike's software flaws still reached the airline's computers, resulting in the cancellation of thousands of flights.

In Georgia, filed a lawsuit against the security software vendor on Friday, alleging breach of contract and negligence following a July outage that affected millions of computers and resulted in 7,000 flight cancellations.

Delta, based in Atlanta, suffered a revenue loss of $380 million and incurred $170 million in costs due to a flawed software update that affected computers running Microsoft's Windows operating system. Other airlines recovered more quickly from the incident.

Delta, days after the outage, hired David Boies of law firm Boies Schiller Flexner to seek damages from CrowdStrike and Delta demanded damages to cover its losses, including litigation costs and punitive damages.

"CrowdStrike's failure to follow proper testing and certification processes led to a global catastrophe, as it cut corners and took shortcuts for its own benefit and profit, according to Delta's complaint. If CrowdStrike had tested the Faulty Update on just one computer before deployment, the computer would have crashed."

CrowdStrike's Falcon software reached Delta's computers despite the airline disabling automatic updates, according to the suit. Delta alleged that the software created and exploited an unauthorized door in Windows, which the airline never would have permitted.

In my view, the destruction that occurred should be fully compensated for, as Delta CEO Ed Bastian stated in a CNBC interview this month.

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz has apologized for an incident and committed to changing practices to prevent similar events. In August, the company lowered its full-year guidance due to a customer commitment package related to an outage.

In September, Microsoft held a summit and discussed potential enhancements with CrowdStrike and other endpoint security software vendors.

CrowdStrike is being criticized by Delta for the outage that occurred, with Delta stating that it cost them $380 million in revenue.