SolarWinds Hack: Retrospective 1

Part 1: SolarWinds and the big picture for executives

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🔒 Related Stories: SolarWinds Breach | Data Breaches.

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I had a number of cybersecurity consulting calls over the past week where customers were scrambling to deal with the SolarWinds hack. People have also been asking me questions about it. After letting the dust settle a bit, I took a look at what we know so far as outsiders. Since I am not involved in the incident directly, I can only make an assessment based on public information. I performed a similar analysis and wrote a white paper on the Target Breach, looking into what caused it and what might have helped prevent it.

Security is not easy

Let’s start with the fact that security is not easy. Anyone who scoffs at those who got compromised may be next. People that don’t work in security complain about it and want it to get out of the way. People who work in security are overloaded with logs and information trying to sort it all out and stay on the good side of business people. Often security people have to deal with organizational politics as much as they do malware and network logs, as I wrote about in this two-part series on why patching is hard. Everything is a…