Page 44 of Keeping Kyle

“The gap I see here,” I said as I flipped screens on my tablet, “is how we allowed security to get so lapse and why we didn’t detect the abnormal traffic.”

“It’s definitely a gap.” The confidence he’d spoken with before diminished. “We’re not sure if there’s a bug in our security software or if it was somehow compromised. We should’ve known files were being accessed without the proper authorizations.”

“How often do we review the security software and protocols?”

Max opened his mouth but closed it without speaking.

“We all know security is constantly patched as recommended by the vendor, and we do analysis every six months to make sure we’re buttoned up.” Tamara spoke up in her commanding but even tone, contrasting my anger. “We just passed our last audit less than three months ago.”

“I’m preparing everything for the Michigan Cyber Command Center and the FBI in case our data crossed state lines.” Max put up more info on the screen with the documents he’d assembled.

We’d worked with MC3 before when one of the car companies we worked with had a hack. They’d been good in that case, and hopefully they would be here too.

“What about the innovation summit material?” I assumed that material was safe since it hadn’t been called out.

“No evidence of tampering there,” Max said, sounding relieved to deliver some good news.

At least our latest and greatest wasn’t compromised.

“We’ll figure out our next steps for Atlas,” Tamara said. “It’s not going to be an easy conversation with them since they had the most proprietary material in what was taken.”

I’d gotten an earful from the CEO of Atlas shortly after Tamara called. “I don’t know what they’re going to come at us with. With their information ending up on Twitter, it blows their new model announcement out of the water. They made it clear that they’d be talking to counsel today on what their options were.”

“I’d like to take the server completely offline,” Max said. “Until we can ensure its security, I’d rather not have anything publicly available that carries our critical materials.”

“Fine.” That answer was easy. “Do what you need to do to fully investigate how this happened and to make sure it can’t happen again. Let the delivery team know the best way to move code around in the short term if we need to.”

“Will do.” Max got up. “I’ll get that done now.”

He headed out, and I rubbed my forehead. A pounding headache formed behind my eyes. I couldn’t have seen this coming, and yet my brain ran at breakneck speed trying to figure out how I could’ve prevented it.

The company was already on shaky ground as we tried to win Atlas, and now they had no reason to trust us.

“I can tell what you’re thinking.” Tamara put her tablet down, stood, and went to the shelf where I kept a couple of bottles. She poured some bourbon for us. “No matter how much time you spent on work, you couldn’t have found this.”

She returned to the table and set a glass down. Wordlessly, I raised it to her and she did the same with her own. We downed the brown liquid. It burned and warmed as it went down.

“It doesn’t mean it’s not some kind of karma coming after me for letting my focus waver.”

“Really?” Her serious face broke to give me the smirk I’d seen a lot in college. “I’m sure the karma goddess has better things to do than come after you for maybe having a life outside of this place.”

She knew exactly the right thing to say, even if I didn’t fully believe it. My way of living worked for years, but when I tried to do things differently, something comes along that can wreck everything faster than not securing a client.

“Want to divide and conquer for the day?” I asked since I had no comeback for her take on karma.

“Let’s do it.” We picked up our tablets at the same time. She had her tapping finger ready to go. “I’ll huddle with P.R. next. We’re going to get a lot of questions from what was out there briefly, so I’ll make sure we’re buttoned up on responses. I’ll work with Donovan to create talking points too since we might both end up doing some interviews.”

I nodded. Tamara always ran with public relations because that was so much easier for her to manage. “I’ll get the details on the other clients affected and set up meetings. Let’s find out from Max what’s going to need to happen with the investigations too. No doubt one of us has to liaison with the agencies.”

“Let’s meet back here at twelve thirty and debrief.” She clicked off her tablet and got up. “We got this.”

She didn’t believe it even as she said it. We both needed to be more convincing to be able to sell that idea.

Tamara exited and left my door open, which was standard for when I was in here by myself.

I leaned back in my chair and let it tip back farther.

Pulling away even the slightest bit that I had had been a mistake. Even before this, the company hadn’t been as secure as it could’ve been.