Create Something New

T - Minus 150 Days

It was a cautionary tale where the villain lost millions of customer dollars over several 6-figure transactions by wiring money to companies in foreign countries without verifying the account information or intended recipient.

"We've been breached", they said.

"What do you mean?", I asked.

Most people think a "breach" means hacking or breaking into computer systems by cybercriminals, but a breach is a disclosure of confidential information that over 97% of the time is from human error.

The villain playing victim described regularly sending unencrypted financial information via e-mail and receiving wiring information back not noticing the sender or payment company were different.

Fortunately, we had long ago created a process to educate clients on risk before they spent dollar one and quickly performed an Incident Response for this user self-reported breach showing there was no malware or hack on the computer.

Curiously the villain went on an immediate 10-day European vacation (maybe to go get the illicit money?) after firing a staff member they blamed for their own mistake and accusing their bank of being hacked saying the funds were "diverted".

In ultimate karma, the villain that tried to play victim and blame everyone else for their egregious errors had their professional engineering license revoked as a "menace to society" and were assessed $3.7M in fines, along with criminal fraud charges of 15 years in prison.

Daily Mission:?Create something new from what you learn today to help your business going forward.

For more thought leadership, follow?Kevin Fream.