Over-security

An excellent approach to information security was shown by the American Economic Development Administration (The Commerce Department's Economic Development Administration).

The virus attack inflicted $ 2.7 million in damage to this agency, which amounted to almost half of its budget, but all the juice was in the details.

Several computers in the organization were infected with viruses. The incident response team analyzed the traffic and concluded that 146 out of 250 computers were infected. As it turned out, they analyzed incorrect data and the problem affected only two computers, in fact.
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But the problem appeared before them serious - this is a cyber attack! We must urgently defend ourselves! As a result, it was decided to physically destroy the "infected" computers, including (!) Mice, keyboards, printers, video cameras, and even televisions (for which $ 170,000 dollars was spent), and a complete change of IT infrastructure.


In total, the costs amounted to more than $ 2.7 million dollars:

• $ 823 thousand dollars, the contractor for the investigation of the incident
• $ 1061 thousand dollars, temporary infrastructure and long-term IT solutions
• $ 175 thousand dollars, destroyed equipment (as well as $ 4 thousand dollars for the destruction itself)
• $ 688 thousand dollars, contractor for recovery

Article on techdirt .

OIG Official Report .