Legal battle between Delta, CrowdStrike heats up with matching lawsuits over outage [Video]

The legal battle between Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines and cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has escalated after both companies filed competing lawsuits against each other.

On Friday, Delta sued CrowdStrike, claiming the cybersecurity company had cut corners and caused a worldwide technology outage that led to thousands of canceled flights in July.

The airline is asking for compensation and punitive damages from the outage, which started with a faulty update sent to several million Microsoft computers. Delta said the outage crippled its operations for several days, costing more than $500 million in lost revenue and extra expenses.

In its lawsuit, Delta claims that the outage occurred because CrowdStrike failed to test the update before rolling it out worldwide.

“CrowdStrike caused a global catastrophe because it cut corners, took shortcuts, and circumvented the very testing and certification processes it advertised, for its own benefit and profit,” Delta said in the lawsuit, which was filed in Fulton County …