What Happens When the Entire IT Infrastructure is Taken Down?

Days after IT said “they have it covered…”

Well, the article didn’t say IT had it covered, but I bet if we talk to the sales people calling on Canada’s Research and Technology Agency, they’re getting push back on security sales, budgets, and more important initiatives. At least until now.

In case you didn’t see the article earlier this week announcing the attack, there were more details in the paper this morning. In my book The House & the Cloud I talk about the importance of sound bites – here’s a few you might want to know before heading out to your client meetings this morning.

Today’s WSJ article brings out some devastating news…This organization, responsible for innovation and research, had to completely shut down! Imagine the financial impact to any one of your clients – big or small. And then to rebuild the entire IT infrastructure! How much will that cost? And if this were a private sector company with a large customer base…

Well, here are the sound bites to give you the bottom line. Note the last one on Heartbleed. This was mentioned as an aside, but many have asked me about data loss due to Heartbleed…the answer is YES. People did lose data.

KEY SOUND BITES:

Canada’s research and technology agency recently experienced a cyberattack by “a highly sophisticated Chinese state-sponsored actor”.
This organization is saying – it will be forced to rebuild its entire information technology infrastructure – estimated a 1 year effort.
What are the after: scientific research and innovation.
The attack was so significant that the only alternative was to shut down the entire system.

HEARTBLEED NOTE: “This comes less than four months after Canada’s tax authority temporarily shut down online tax-filing services after the discovery of a system breach related to the Internet security flaw known as the Heartbleed bug. Canadian police later charged a Canadian college student with stealing confidential taxpayer data by exploiting the flaw.”

If you have access to the WSJ, here’s the entire article: http://online.wsj.com/articles/canadian-government-reports-cyberattack-1406638057

P.S. Do you have a copy of The House & the Cloud? It’s one of the only books I know of on how to sell security…get it free in PDF format right here…(CLICK).