This could backfire on Ubiquiti - considering Krebs stellar reputation already, that if it does go to court, and they rule in Krebs favor, it becomes even more devasatating to winning any further Enterprise market contracts.
It could kill Ubiquiti on all enterprise deals with "cybersecurity business risk" factors each enterprise ways before making decisions.
Krebs does not really have a stellar reputation. He seems to enjoy doxxing random people who criticize him.[1]
He generally does good work but the thing he's being sued over was an example of lazy journalism. I would expect a seasoned journalist to actually verify the claims being fed to them rather than regurgitating things blindly. He didn't do that in this case it seems, instead buying the story he was being (figuratively) sold completely and not bothering to do any checking.
Ubiquiti might not be doing themselves favors in PR here but if they have actual proof that he knew they were not covering it up, and there's provable damages this won't go the way people want. That's going to be a really high bar for them to clear though, barring them responding directly to a request for comment with "no absolutely not we're investigating and will release details later" or something to that effect.
Defamation suits on this scale are difficult, just look at what's been happening with Fox's election system related lawsuits[2] -- judges keep ruling against them on requests for dismissal. They may not ultimately lose any of these cases based on the facts but they also have the resources to make that a lengthy journey, where I don't think Krebs does.
It could kill Ubiquiti on all enterprise deals with "cybersecurity business risk" factors each enterprise ways before making decisions.