You see the news articles and it seems possible you personally will be attacked, so you change your passwords often, create second authentications on your bank accounts and watch out for the spammers. Then you go to log in to work on Monday morning, October 14th and... No VPN. Which means No email, No CRM, No Lotus notes and no access to any network drive.
In my role of outside sales, I had my most frequently contacted customers in my iPhone and a contact list from 2018, which I just happened to print. My thoughts went directly to triage mode and focused on the most important opportunities in my pipeline. I reached out to key contacts at my major accounts, explained the situation, and promised frequent updates as our team worked tirelessly to rebuild our IT infrastructure from the ground up.
Just before our cyberattack, one of my customers in the packaging industry had committed to using Pilz products for all their new production. I felt a personal approach with this customer was best, so I made three trips to the customer’s facility that was located 146 miles away. Since our systems were down, new quotes had to be created using previous paper copies as examples. I personally delivered the quote along with samples borrowed from our technical support team. The Pilz team in Canton, Michigan, worked their magic to ship the products and ensure this new data was kept secure.
The customer had previously gone through a cyberattack and as a result were empathetic to our situation. Given the challenges they had recovering from their attack, they were cautiously optimistic that we would deliver in time. They were ecstatic when we came through and delivered as we promised.
Together we made certain the customer received Pilz products in time to get their machines built and shipped by December. Today we are back online and we continue to provide the customer the products they need as their business grows, building an even stronger relationship.
