This past weekend was go-live weekend for my client’s system software upgrade. The vendor for this software was hit with a ransomware attack. Techies who are interested in the dirty details can read about it in this article. 

This is a scary scenario made all the more scarier by the fact that it happened to such a large IT company. In addition to the potential damaging disclosure of proprietary information, the most direct result of this attack is that the company’s email and internal servers are down. Over go-live weekend and continuing to present, our project manager was taking pictures of emails with her phone and texting them to employees at the vendor. One employee even suggested getting some sort of group chat going on Whatsapp so we can stay in touch. I kept trying to avoid a commitment by replying, “What’s that?” over and over. 

Hackers and evildoers are always lurking in the shadows. To execute attacks like this, especially during a worldwide pandemic, is truly evil. Imagine if they targeted infrastructure, city or local governments, or the healthcare apparatus. That would be the last thing we need as we try to get out of the mess we’re in.