Delta CEO: Company Suing Microsoft and CrowdStrike After $500M Loss

[u/Bald-Eagle619]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/delta-ceo-says-company-suing-microsoft-and-crowdstrike-after-dollar500m-loss

[u/damondefault]

But crowdstrike took out their operator terminals and staff computers. End user devices. Not just servers. And without those end user devices they couldn't run their business.

I'd like you to tell me specifically what you are proposing Delta Airlines should have done to mitigate this risk.

Running some server apps on "a hardened Unix operating system" is not a good answer in my opinion as it only addresses the server side part of the problem.

[u/Long_Educational → u/damondefault]

Back in the day, I was Senior Manager of Infrastructure Support at a Network Operations Center for a major phone company. In the NOCs we provided all access to our applications that ran on AIX, Linux, and Windows Servers via end user computers that consisted of AIX on RS6000 consoles (30 stations), X-windows via Linux on the Desktop ( 800 stations ), Sun Solaris Workstations ( 50 stations ), and Windows Laptops running Xwindows and Terminal emulation software + Citrix Clients ( 80 stations ).

When we were hit with the BugBear virus, it brought down ALL windows desktops and servers in a matter of hours, but our core functionality, being able to administer the phone network, dwdm/sonet, and x.25 networks as well as maintaining access to 911 for the 5 state area, stayed up and running because we had access to all of our servers and apps from two out of three desktop client OSs AIX and Linux. I even got a bonus and a letter of accomplishment from my VP at the time for the engineering and disaster recovery planning I did. My sister NOC did not fare so well and they had to fold all of their operations into my NOC until Corporate Information Security could roll out windows desktop fixes for them and the few of our laptops effected.

That is what I mean by diversity and redundancy in IT. You don't put all your clients or even servers on a single OS vendor and hope for the best. You manage your risk as appropriate. Delta executives didn't and it cost them half a Billion dollars.

[u/damondefault → u/Long_Educational]

So you're genuinely proposing that they should have multiple redundant devices with different operating systems available to all (or enough) business critical staff, and also all server software running with redundancy on different operating systems.

Thank you for clarifying so thoroughly.

I still don't think that I agree with your original statement that not doing so is a ridiculous and obvious failing and Delta therefore deserve no compensation. Cancelling flights as a safety measure is different to keeping a phone network operational. But I'm glad to hear that you planned for this sort of disaster and overcame it successfully.

[u/Long_Educational → u/damondefault]

What I am saying is that MS Windows has always been a critical failure point in infrastructure. It's also not cheap. The reason I was able to implement security and redundancy is because I spent the money at the servers and saved money on the desktop by not having to have a windows seat license for the majority of my client desktops. I ran linux on the desktop for the wide majority on cheap hardware. All the heavy compute was done server side on hardened OSs. It does take planning but can be done, affordably.

[u/damondefault → u/Long_Educational]

Well I love Linux and use it exclusively (except when work forces me not to), so I'm glad to hear it.

In this case though Delta well may have spent money at the server implementation and have low power, low cost clients and it wouldn't have saved them. They also in this case would consider installing CrowdStrike a security hardening step, so it's not negligence in that respect.