Cybersecurity
When Spotting a Hack Doesn’t Help You
Ben Cotton diagnosed a massive federal breach, then got stiffed.
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On April 21, 2015, Ben Cotton visited the U.S. Office of Personnel Management in downtown Washington to pitch his small cybersecurity company, CyTech Services. He loaded proprietary diagnostic software onto five servers running on OPM’s network. Uh-oh, the chief executive told his hosts, “you’ve got a big problem here.”
Over subsequent months, OPM—the federal government’s HR department—acknowledged it had suffered massive data thefts, which U.S. officials attributed to Chinese intruders. The stolen material included personnel records and background-check data for more than 22 million current and former government officials.