Recent Massive Cyber Hacks Call for a Long View of Crisis Communication

It’s a loaded question to ask when a PR crisis ends. With some crises, reminders last indefinitely. In other cases, the actual crisis lasts for months.

This month we begin an occasional series that updates crises mentioned in previous editions of Crisis Insider and offers additional insights.

SolarWinds Still Blowing

There are few better examples of crisis’ long tail than SolarWinds. Breaking into the news a few weeks before Christmas 2020, operatives, allegedly Russians, hacked Orion, a network monitoring product from vendor SolarWinds. More than 33,000 public and private customers deployed Orion. It is estimated the hack touched at least nine US federal agencies and 100 companies. We use the word ‘estimated’ since revelations continue to flow, almost daily.

Indeed, in our Jan. 2021 edition,  Kaylin Trychon, a VP at ROKK Solutions and now at Google, and Kristin Miller, director, Ping Security, said stories about the hack would dribble out for months, if not years. So far, they’re spot on.