Cognizant is in the middle of a legal storm. American consumer brand Clorox has sued the IT giant for $380 million (₹3,000 crore), claiming a major cyberattack in August 2023 happened because of Cognizant’s poor handling of help desk services.
Clorox says the hack badly hurt its business. The attack stopped production, messed up supply chains, and caused huge losses. According to Clorox, it spent $49 million to fix the damage and lost hundreds of millions more in business.
At the center of this lawsuit is a key claim:
Clorox says Cognizant’s help desk team let hackers reset employee login details without checking properly. That small mistake, Clorox argues, opened the door for the hackers.
But Cognizant isn’t staying quiet.
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In a strong reply, the IT company said Clorox is blaming the wrong people. A Cognizant spokesperson said, “It is shocking that a big company like Clorox had such weak cybersecurity. We were only hired for basic help desk work. We didn’t manage their security systems.”
Cognizant added that it did what it was asked to do and followed all proper steps. The company called Clorox’s claims “shocking” and denied any fault.
Still, this case raises big questions:
- Why did Clorox wait nearly two years to file the case?
- Did new facts come out recently?
- Was this part of a new legal strategy?
The timing is also interesting. Right after the 2023 attack, Clorox’s Chief Information Security Officer, Amy Bogac, stepped down. The company has never clearly said if her exit had anything to do with the hack.
Till now, Clorox hasn’t replied to media queries.
Meanwhile, this case is creating buzz in the tech world. If Clorox wins, it could make IT firms more careful about even small support roles. But if Cognizant proves it did nothing wrong, it could shift the focus back to how well companies like Clorox protect themselves.
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