SEC Drops SolarWinds Case After Years of Excessive-Stakes Cybersecurity Scrutiny

Nov 21, 2025Ravie LakshmananCompliance / Cyber Assault

The U.S. Securities and Change Fee (SEC) has deserted its lawsuit towards SolarWinds and its chief data safety officer, alleging that the corporate had misled buyers concerning the safety practices that led to the 2020 provide chain assault.

In a joint movement filed November 20, 2025, the SEC, together with SolarWinds and its CISO Timothy G. Brown, requested the court docket to voluntarily dismiss the case.

The SEC stated its determination to hunt dismissal “doesn’t essentially replicate the Fee’s place on every other case.”

SolarWinds and Brown have been accused by the SEC in October 2023 of “fraud and inner management failures” and that the corporate defrauded buyers by overstating its cybersecurity practices and understating or failing to reveal recognized dangers.

The company additionally stated each SolarWinds and Brown ignored “repeated crimson flags” and did not adequately shield its belongings, in the end resulting in the provide chain compromise that got here to gentle in late 2020. The assault was attributed to a Russian state-sponsored risk actor generally known as APT29.

“Brown was conscious of SolarWinds’ cybersecurity dangers and vulnerabilities however did not resolve the problems or, at occasions, sufficiently elevate them additional throughout the firm,” the SEC alleged on the time.

Nonetheless, in July 2024, many of those allegations have been thrown out by the U.S. District Courtroom for the Southern District of New York (SDNY), stating “these don’t plausibly plead actionable deficiencies within the firm’s reporting of the cybersecurity hack” and that they “impermissibly depend on hindsight and hypothesis.”

Subsequently, the SEC additionally charged Avaya, Examine Level, Mimecast, and Unisys for making “materially deceptive disclosures” associated to the large-scale cyber assault that stemmed from the SolarWinds hack.

In an announcement, SolarWinds CEO Sudhakar Ramakrishna stated the most recent growth marks the tip of an period that challenged the corporate, and emphasised “we emerge stronger, safer, and higher ready than ever for what lies forward.”