Categories: U.S. Federal Law, Cybersecurity, Enforcement
In a surprising development in the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (“SEC’s”) ongoing securities fraud case against SolarWinds Corp. (“SolarWinds”) and its former chief information security officer (“CISO”), Timothy Brown, all three parties have petitioned the judge for a stay pending final settlement. Until the SEC’s four commissioners can vote to approve the settlement, the parties have requested the stay until at least September 12, 2025.

As we previously reported, in October 2023, the SEC sued software developer SolarWinds and its former CISO, alleging that SolarWinds misled investors about a series of heavily publicized cyberattacks that targeted the company, culminating in the December 2020 Sunburst malware attack. In addition to alleging securities fraud and violations of SEC reporting provisions, the SEC also alleged that SolarWinds violated Sarbanes-Oxley internal control provisions.

In July 2024, U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer granted SolarWinds’ and the company’s former CISO’s motions to dismiss on most claims. A single set of fraud claims survived concerning alleged misstatements and omissions in a “Security Statement” that was published on SolarWinds’ website. The Security Statement described the company’s various cybersecurity practices, which the SEC alleges painted an incomplete and misleading picture. As recently as June 2025, the SEC indicated it was ready to try the case and filed a motion in opposition to the defendants’ motion to dismiss the remaining claim.

On July 2, 2025, all three parties—the SEC, SolarWinds and the company’s former CISO—sent a joint letter to the judge indicating they had reached an agreement in principle to settle the case. Any settlement is subject to approval of the four SEC commissioners. As noted above, the parties’ joint letter requested a stay until at least September 12, 2025 to give the SEC commissioners time to review the matter. Two of the sitting commissioners have been critical of the SEC’s case.

It is difficult to speculate what the final terms of settlement may be. Unrelated to this case, with the change in presidential administration, the SEC has dismissed numerous enforcement cases targeting the cryptocurrency industry on the grounds that the cases were imprudently brought. It is possible this philosophy has now been extended to the SolarWinds case, and the SEC may seek to drop the case entirely. It also is possible that this movement by the SEC staff is more in line with other settled cases, and could simply entail reduced charges and remedies acceptable to all parties. The fact that the SEC enforcement staff still needs approval by the SEC commissioners may imply that this latter scenario is more likely. Like any plaintiff, the SEC does from time to time settle enforcement cases after they have entered litigation for any number of reasons.

SolarWinds addressed a critical remote code execution vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-28991, in Access Rights Manager.

The SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD) software is affected by a hardcoded credential vulnerability, allowing remote unauthenticated user to access internal functionality and modify data.

A critical vulnerability in SolarWinds' Web Help Desk solution for customer support could be exploited to achieve remote code execution, the American business software developer warns in a security advisory today.

Former employee says software giant dismissed his warnings about a critical flaw because it feared losing government business. Russian hackers later used the weakness to breach the National Nuclear Security Administration, among others.

À la suite d’une cyberattaque ayant touché SolarWinds Corp., la SEC a déposé une action civile contre la société qui aurait trompé les investisseurs sur ses pratiques en matière de cybersécurité. Cette action civile met en évidence, d’une part, les mauvaises pratiques adoptées par la société, et d’autre part, l’importance accrue que la SEC porte sur les informations en matière de cybersécurité que les sociétés publient à l’attention des investisseurs.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has charged SolarWinds and its top cybersecurity executive Timothy Brown with fraud and internal control

SolarWinds' access controls contain five high and three critical-severity security vulnerabilities that need to be patched yesterday.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has notified the chief financial officer and CISO of SolarWinds about potential enforcement actions related to the 2020 cyberattack against the company’s Orion software platform, the company disclosed in a regulatory filing with the agency.

It was late 2019, and Adair, the president of the security firm Volexity, was investigating a digital security breach at an American think tank. The intrusion was nothing special. Adair figured he and his team would rout the attackers quickly and be done with the case—until they noticed something strange. A second group of hackers was active in the think tank’s network. They were going after email, making copies and sending them to an outside server. These intruders were much more skilled, and they were returning to the network several times a week to siphon correspondence from specific executives, policy wonks, and IT staff.

In May 2020, the US Department of Justice noticed Russian hackers in its network but did not realize the significance of what it had found for six months.