What Your Office Might Look Like If You Are Hacked

According to multiple news reports (like BBC, Forbes, and  Computerworld), Sony has been hacked again.  This time they were hacked by the GOP (no, not that GOP, the Guardians of Peace).

So, here is what Sony’s office looked like yesterday – and your’s might if you get hacked.

Employees came into the office yesterday, turned on their computers and were greeted by this:

Sony (technically Sony Pictures Entertainment) told the media they were investigating an IT matter when this was leaked to the media – not a great job of rumor control.  Later that was updated to “Sony Pictures Entertainment experienced a system disruption, which are working diligently to resolve.”

The company’s internet connections were taken offline as a precaution.

Employees in New York, Los Angeles and the Culver City Studios were told not to access the internet or corporate email, to disable any wireless connections and voice mail (which goes to email) is intermittent.  Employees were told they could still use the phones.  Later, employees were sent home.

That was yesterday.  Today, day two, there is no update.  I suspect but have no inside information, that they really are not sure how deep the hackers are in the company or what information they exfiltrated.  Rumors include that the hackers had inside help.

The GOP is threatening to release internal “Secret and Top Secret” documents if their demands are not met.  The GOP also said that “this is just the beginning”.

Sony Pictures is a multi billion dollar company so I doubt it is going out of business any time soon (at least as a result of this – their financials have not looked too good in the last 8 quarters).  None the less, this is a serious disruption with no end in sight.

The political embarrassment of the hack will last a long time, especially after the multiple hacks they endured last year.

But here is the question.  Let’s assume this happened to your company.  How would your company handle it – from communications to operations to customers to vendors.  Are you prepared for something like this?  

Mitcfh

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