SolarWinds Mostly Beats The Rap When It Comes To An SEC Lawsuit Related To Their Epic Pwnage

Well, this isn’t good in terms of accountability.

A U.S. judge dismissed most of a Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit accusing software company SolarWinds of defrauding investors by concealing its security weaknesses before and after a Russia-linked cyberattack targeting the U.S. government. You can read the decision here.

John Gunn, CEO, Token had this to say:

The backdrop to this ruling is the recent SCOTUS decision in Loper that overturned the Chevron deference and placed a greater burden on regulatory agencies, including the SEC, to more clearly define regulatory requirements and to move decisions on penalties from agencies to the courts. 

Anyone who sees this as SolarWinds being relieved from the consequences of their actions is overlooking the $26 million they paid to settle the shareholder class action lawsuit resulting from this incident and the staggering $2 billion loss in company value they have suffered since the incident was disclosed. These financial penalties have the biggest impact on other organizations’ motivation to pursue more stringent cybersecurity protections and disclosures.

While SolarWinds did pay a financial price for this hack, I really think that this isn’t enough. Legal accountability has to be layered on top of this as a financial accountability will simply become a cost to doing business. That doesn’t happen with legal accountability. Hopefully this gets appealed.

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