The company I own got hacked and our database was stolen, containing basic user and company data for 100,000s of users as well as some partial card data. From the moment I discovered the breach (browsing logs after an unexplained brief outage), for the next 3-6 months, my life did not belong to me, but to insurers, forensic investigators, regulators, the police, credit card companies, press/media, and thousands of customers who emailed and called about it. Suddenly my life went from two or three people I would regularly interact with a couple times per week, to dozens of people who were involved in the crisis response, cleanup, and 'remediations' who I would speak to multiple times per 16-18 hour day.
Around the same time, I lost some close friends very suddenly - one to cancer, another to old age. And there was the whole pandemic thing. I still haven't been able to grieve properly about that.
You read about data breaches happening almost every week to various companies large and small, and mutter about how careless they were, or worry about whether you were personally affected. But from the inside, it is a totally different story for those involved (if they have even an ounce of genuine remorse and concern, as I did). Behind the scenes, they are an absolute shit-show. The truth is we had been careful and the hack was due to a compromised vendor, not our own code or networking, but I felt massively responsible and like the worst person in the world. I worked the 16-18 hour days in part to assuage my own guilt, but also because I had nobody else that could. The one saving grace was having good cyber crime insurance (which, I note, is now far more expensive than before - I'd pay it many times over, though).
I'm still not over the incident, and have regular therapy (and regular nightmares) with many days spent unable to really focus on anything. Burnout is real, PTSD is real, and I don't know if I will ever feel truly safe again - I certainly feel that I need to get myself off the internet as soon as possible, and away from any kind of business leadership role. I just cannot ever face something like that ever again.
The company I own got hacked and our database was stolen, containing basic user and company data for 100,000s of users as well as some partial card data. From the moment I discovered the breach (browsing logs after an unexplained brief outage), for the next 3-6 months, my life did not belong to me, but to insurers, forensic investigators, regulators, the police, credit card companies, press/media, and thousands of customers who emailed and called about it. Suddenly my life went from two or three people I would regularly interact with a couple times per week, to dozens of people who were involved in the crisis response, cleanup, and 'remediations' who I would speak to multiple times per 16-18 hour day.
Around the same time, I lost some close friends very suddenly - one to cancer, another to old age. And there was the whole pandemic thing. I still haven't been able to grieve properly about that.
You read about data breaches happening almost every week to various companies large and small, and mutter about how careless they were, or worry about whether you were personally affected. But from the inside, it is a totally different story for those involved (if they have even an ounce of genuine remorse and concern, as I did). Behind the scenes, they are an absolute shit-show. The truth is we had been careful and the hack was due to a compromised vendor, not our own code or networking, but I felt massively responsible and like the worst person in the world. I worked the 16-18 hour days in part to assuage my own guilt, but also because I had nobody else that could. The one saving grace was having good cyber crime insurance (which, I note, is now far more expensive than before - I'd pay it many times over, though).
I'm still not over the incident, and have regular therapy (and regular nightmares) with many days spent unable to really focus on anything. Burnout is real, PTSD is real, and I don't know if I will ever feel truly safe again - I certainly feel that I need to get myself off the internet as soon as possible, and away from any kind of business leadership role. I just cannot ever face something like that ever again.
Thanks