SolarWinds, recently targeted by Russian hackers, hired former US government cybersecurity chief Chris Krebs. Krebs will help the company to recover and improve its security for other possible attacks. Krebs, who was recently fired by Donald Trump for debunking his election fraud claims, formed a new business with Stanford University professor and former Facebook chief security officer Alex Stamos. The duo has been hired by the company as an independent consultant and will help the company to repair the damage.
Enhancing posture and policies
During the attacks, 18,000 SolarWinds customers’ networks were accessed by Russian hackers. Attackers targeted the Department of State; Department of Homeland Security; National Institutes of Health; the Pentagon; Department of the Treasury; Department of Commerce; and the Department of Energy, and the National Nuclear Security Administration. The company’s new president and CEO Sudhakar Ramakrishna also stated in a blog post,
“Armed with what we have learned of this attack, we are also reflecting on our own security practices and seeking opportunities to enhance our posture and policies. I am doing that by working directly with the SolarWinds team to lead the immediate improvement of critical business and product development systems, with the goal of making SolarWinds an enterprise software industry security leader. These transformative efforts will require tremendous focus on security programs, policies, teams, and culture.
We have engaged several leading cybersecurity experts to assist us in this journey and I commit to being transparent with our customers, our government partners, and the general public in both the near-term and long-term about our security enhancements to ensure we maintain what’s most important to us, your trust.”