Kristin R. Moyer
Rick DeLotto here. You may not have seen this one, as it hasn’t drawn that much press yet, but there was a report this morning that the US Department of Justice detected and blocked an attempt by a contract worker to destroy all data belonging to The Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA) (AKA Fannie Mae”) by infecting their computer systems with a virus. This has caused quite a flurry of email and comment here. What has amazed me the most is that people were astonished—surely it wasn’t unexpected?
Financial Institutions are like the society in which they operate, surrounded by and permeated by Bad Guys—as notorious bank robber Willie Sutton reportedly said– “that’s where the money is.” History is replete with images of “moles” helping perpetrate an “inside job,” and almost every cowboy movie I saw that involved a bank robbery had a Bad Guy try to destroy evidence by dragging leafy branches behind his horse while he and his cronies escaped.. This seemed different only in details of technique, and I have the nagging feeling that someone should start doing forensic work on data-destroying system crashes across financial services… I wonder what else has been covered up in the last few years?
As the story developed over the day, though, we found that the ruckus was caused by the alleged actions by a disgruntled foreign national employed by Fannie Mae who, in the several hours-long interval between his firing and losing system access, was able to set up a “time bomb program” to schedule erasing the data from, and resetting, 4,000 servers several months after his forced departure. Too bad—it was more exciting as a cowboy movie or Soprano’s episode.
Hmmm… Challenger Grey and Christmas most recent figures for financial services layoffs in 2008 only run up through October, and total just under 130,000 till then… guesstimates from early in the year were pointing toward 200,000…add in the roughly 150,000 from 2007 and you have an awfully large number of opportunities for mischief. How many of these guys heard about their layoff over the TV one morning rather than under carefully control circumstances in the office?
Please make sure you turn off their system access before you lay them off. Make a copy of the articles about this and make sure your colleagues in HR each get their own copy. This is a wonderfully appropriate time to make certain all previously departed staff and contractors have had their password and entry privileges blocked, physical keys were recovered and entry pass-codes changed, and that security is aware that terminated employees are no longer permitted free entry to facilities.
Category: Executive Decisions Uncategorized operations Tags: banking and investment services, fannie mae, risk management
1 response so far ↓
1 Gwen Dille February 2, 2009 at 10:49 pm
Great post. I’d be curious to know what IT tools these financial institutions (and other large companies) have in place to ensure that all the necessary HR actions are being taken in a consistent and documented fashion — and how they’re managing the investigations such as the time bomb program you referenced.