Surviving a cyber attack Small businesses are targets, but training and diligence can help shut scammers down
O
ne Sunday night a colleague of Eileen Manning at her event planning company was dialing in remotely to do some work but was finding the connectivity slow. When she couldn’t get on to the company’s network she called Manning and described a scenario that just seemed odd. Though it was late, Manning advised her to call the The Event Group’s technology partner and, sure enough, hackers had gotten into a couple of the company’s computers and were causing havoc. The hackers had sent a ransom notice demanding Bitcoin in exchange for restoring The Event Group’s data. But the IT firm was able to shut the infiltrators down. “Because we caught it early, we just shut the whole thing down, wiped those two machines, reinstalled the information on everybody’s machine and we were up and running by 10 o’clock the next morning,” says Manning, founder and CEO of The Event Group. “It was because we had a plan in place.” Manning had long played a hunch when dealing with technology that having a partner would pay off. Turns out she was right. “We’ve always had an outside technology company to protect us and be our IT support,” she says. “When I started the business, I just knew from very early on it was really critical for some of the stuff I was doing.”
Manning leads cybersecurity event
Having an outside partner and spending time training employees allowed Manning’s company to thwart a cyber incident on her own turf. She’s become well connected in the statewide cybersecurity arena in recent years, as well. In 2011, the University of Minnesota’s Technological Leadership Institute (TLI) approached her to find out what she knew about cybersecurity. “I said ‘cyber what?” she says. “It was 2011. Cybersecurity wasn’t a household word.” But with the highest per capita collection of Fortune 500 companies in the U.S. and as a state with all 16 critical infrastructure sectors, as defined by the
The Event Group, headed by Eileen Manning, will host its ninth Cybersecurity Summit later this year.
by Andrew Tellijohn photographs by tom dunn
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UPSIZE JULY • AUGUST 2019
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