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Hackers tried to rob me of $15m. Here’s how I stopped them…

Ransomware is rife. One of the ways to reduce its global proliferation is to openly share stories. It’s not something many companies do. But here – to his credit – is one CIO's tale...


The phone call came at 4am 
My name's Matthew Day. As CIO of Langs Building Supplies in Queensland, Australia, I’d been looking forward to a long holiday after 14 months of Covid-blighted operations.

But then the phone rang. One of my factory supervisors said they couldn’t get into the system:“We’ve been hacked!”

I jumped out of bed and rushed to the office. I saw the boot loader screen message: “We’ve encrypted all your data. Pay up… or we’ll publish it on the dark web.” 

The hairs on my neck stood up
I realised this was no small ransomware attack. They had scoped our business: hunted us, waited for us to be asleep, and took the shot with sniper gun precision. Worst of all, through our Rubrik zero trust security solution, I could see they had secured elevated access rights.

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