Slashdot Mirror
Cyber-Scammers Steal €50 Million From Austrian Airplane Manufacturer (softpedia.com)
An anonymous reader writes: FACC Operations GmbH, an Austrian company that produces various airplane parts for companies like Airbus and Boeing, has announced a cyber-incident during which cyber-fraudsters managed to steal around €50 million from their bank accounts. While CEO Fraud attacks manage to steal a few thousand dollars here and there, never has a company lost so much cash liquidity in one incident. Stock price took a tumble immediately.
I have a similar story. I was asked by a division president to make a chance to a production system that was going to halt production and cost the company a lot of money. He listened to my explanation three entire times (each less technical than the last) and still wanted it done. When I still insisted that I'd rather lose my job than have my name next to the biggest technical disaster the company would ever face, he stormed off. I immediately went to my boss's cube and told him what had happened and that it was nice working for him (which was true). A few minutes later, I got a call from the local HR telling me I had been terminated and to come to my cube immediately, where building security was waiting for me.
A few weeks later, I get a call at home from my old boss saying that after the shitstorm died down, they had convinced this blowhard that it was not in the company's interests to make such a major change as it flipping a light switch, because it was going to cause known failures and outages with downtime that would be extremely costly.
I didn't get my job back, of course. I learned a super valuable lesson that day - don't let upper management corner you into this sort of situation. Physically avoid anyone higher up than your N+1 manager. Avoid answering their emails and phone calls as much as possible. When you absolutely have to correspond with them, give them one word answers. When pressed, feign ignorance so they move their scrutiny to the next doomed employee. Upper management is the biggest risk to any organization.