The Forces — Internal and External!

Chapter 1

“Hey Anjali, the manager is calling you, he is waiting in the ‘Mount Everest’ conference room”, told Niharika. Anjali’s heart skipped a beat hearing this from her colleague. She could foresee the tough time. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, grabbed her handbag, and went to the washroom.

Anjali stood in front of the washbasin looking at herself in the mirror without blinking her eyes. Uncontrolled, tears started to well up and her image blurred. A fellow worker wiping her hands with the tissue paper saw Anjali’s condition and patted her back trying to give some strength. Gaining back her consciousness, Anjali quickly pulled some tissue papers and wiped her tears. She zipped open her handbag, took out the eyeliner, lipstick and made herself. Though her face was covered up with the chemicals of foundation, eyeliner, and lipstick, her eyes were telling the truth. Anjali was not ready to face it.

She gained her composure and walked towards the “Mount Everest” conference room. She could see her manager sitting with deep thoughts inside the glass cabin as she approached the room. The manager signaled her to get inside and directed her to sit in the opposite chair. Anjali sat and continued to look down. Unable to make eye contact, the Manager was working on his laptop and there was an awkward silence in the room.

Breaking the ice, “Vishwas, I got to know you wanted to meet me. I think we can talk”, said Anjali.

Vishwas continued to stare at the laptop screen and told, “Yes Anjali, I appreciate you for coming here. I don’t know how to convey it. But I have bad news for you”

“I am prepared for it Vishwas, please speak out”

Hearing it, Vishwas suddenly looked at Anjali and told “You are requested to resign from the company. As you know, our company was hit by a recent Cyber Attack which made us pay millions of dollars of ransom to restore our data and operations. Things are in really a bad state. I don’t know even if my job is safe. But HR is expecting a resignation email from you in the next 60 minutes. I am sorry to say this.”

Anjali couldn’t control and tears fell from her eyes. Vishwas walked out of the room and came back with a bottle of water to give to Anjali.

“Please have some water, things will be alright Anjali”.

Without responding anything to Vishwas, Anjali stood up and made a swift exit from the room. Vishwas stood there as he looked at Anjali moving away.

Anjali went to her desk, logged into her laptop, quickly composed an email of resignation, and sent it to HR copying Vishwas.

She voluntarily pulled out all the power chords, mouse, and other accessories, walked into the IT service desk room to hand it over. Nobody was in a state to speak anything. Anjali came out of the building, turned back, and looked at the company building with a lot of admiration, silently thanked, and disappeared from the campus of Outosys.

Chapter 2

Outosys outperformed the share market predictions and gave away a handful of bonus shares along with great dividends during the last fiscal year-end. Employees got better pay hikes than expected and got their promotions. However, things started falling since the world got hit by the corona pandemic. The company was never prepared to handle such unforeseen situations. Though they announced work from home for all their employees, the company struggled to a great extent to ensure the required infrastructure of computers, power chords, and other accessories to provide its employees.

The initial problem started when multiple projects had to show the mass absence of resources to continue the ongoing projects. This caused a huge billing loss and brought down the confidence of clients. The IT service desk teams and Infrastructure teams worked day and night to provide all the required support to the company’s employees just to maintain business continuity.

Over 4 months, things started to stabilize. The company could show their clients the complete hours of billing and slowly recover from the unexpected change in the model of working. Much of its reserve funds were exhausted to cope up with this change, paying the employees their salaries on time and procuring new computers. Outosys formed a new task force team that comprised eminent HR professionals, people managers, personnel from leadership teams, and administrative folks. The task force constantly got in touch with each employee to understand their problem and resolve it at the earliest. Employees gained good confidence in their management and continued to contribute better than earlier to build good business for their company and their survival.

Some of the employees who were working for an Australian client observed that they were not able to get the project-related data from their project directories. Some of their teammates lost email access. One after the other started reporting the issues they faced to the concerned IT service desk team and their respective managers. When the support personnel tried to resolve the issues, they started to observe the missing of important files and folders strangely. Managers communicated to the client requesting some time to resolve the internal technical issue. On the first day, a total of 730 such incidents got reported. Some of the most important project application data got encrypted, systems became unresponsive and the desktop access was also blocked for the project stakeholders. It became the most alarming incident and by evening, the client’s Social Security Numbers, Tax IDs, Financial Information, Passport details were on sale on the dark web. The CTO of the company inevitably had to announce that they are hit by a Cyber Attack.

As soon as this official news was out, some of the clients across the globe opted to protect themselves from the malware by closing off Outosys’s access to their networks, effectively putting projects on hold. Outosys quickly called in leading cybersecurity experts to assist their internal IT security teams. The Outosys ransomware attack was also reported to law enforcement agencies, and Outosys clients were provided with constant updates. For employees who had corporate credit cards, the company warned that they were likely exposed during the attack. The share price of the company fell drastically and caused a major heartbreak in the investors.

The company started to fight both internally and externally to face this disaster which caused severe reputational damage and also the most confidential data breach. The clients started demanding to restore their application services and brought in legal notices to pay them the penal amount as per the SLA. Many employees were asked not to turn on their computer machines till further notice. The initial ransom demand by the attackers was $300m which was costing a fortune for the company. The CEO of the company finally agreed to pay the ransom in the immediate aftermath with further costs incurred after that to fully restore its services. Being a Fortune 500 company, Outosys suffered a major setback and lost many upcoming business deals and existing clients.

The leadership team had several meetings and finally decided to lay off 60% of its employees. This was the only option for the company’s survival and continued business. All the business units and HR teams were communicated to start the layoff during which the employees were asked to visit the office just for one day and hand over the company assets while they receive their pink slip.

Out of thousands of such laid-off employees, Anjali’s name was also on the list and the misfortune hit her badly. It was her 2nd company in her career where she passionately joined to blossom as a great engineer. She was so engrossed in her thoughts of fear about her future life and sat at the bus stop tightly holding her handbag without realizing that she stayed there for almost 4 hours. Getting back to reality, she checked her mobile phone and could see multiple missed calls from her parents, colleagues, and Vishwas. She was not in a mood to call back any of them. She took an auto and went home.

Chapter 3

Anjali called up her parents and told them she is coming to the village to spend some days there. Parents were more than happy to welcome her. But as soon as she arrived home, her parents could make out that something is not fine. But they didn’t want to disturb her as she was home after a long time. Anjali’s father was a farmer in their village, and they were quite a well-to-do family. The income was good though her father had limited lands, he was a man of magic in the way he grew crops and sold. Nobody in their village could compete with him though others had more lands.

Anjali finally revealed about her lay-off from the company while having lunch with her parents. Her mother was surprised and took some time to accept the fact. But father consoled her calmly and encouraged her to take some break, relax and try for a new job in a different company. Anjali felt a little better listening to her father’s words. Anjali was always inspired by her father in many aspects. Though her father worked as a farmer, he was a well-read person with good basic knowledge of English and computers. He was able to successfully deal with all the online orders for his agricultural products through his small computer at home.

Anjali went out to spend some time with her childhood friends. She was happy to meet her good friend Vishnu who ran a small stationery shop in their village. Vishnu also had 3 computer systems with an internet connection which he converted into a cyber café and owned a couple of photocopy machines. Vishnu closed the shop earlier than usual and went out for a walk with Anjali. After some casual talks, Anjali shared the news of her lost job and her mental struggle to come over it. Vishnu listened to her affectionately and consoled her with his encouraging words. He also told her that she can use his cyber café to apply for job openings and prepare for her next interviews online. Anjali got some confidence in her with these words and acknowledged his help.

The routine was set. Every day morning, Anjali would wake up early, go for a walk to her father’s fields, and practice Yoga for some time there. Once she is back home, she would have her breakfast, leave for Vishnu’s cybercafé, spend a good amount of time applying for new jobs and prepare for her next interviews. During the evening hours, she preferred to have a walk with her friends and have dinner early, read a book and go to sleep.

As the days passed, Anjali started getting interview calls from multiple MNCs. Though Anjali struggled a bit in clearing the initial few company interviews, she got a grip of it sooner and was able to crack multiple rounds of interviews. Vishnu did his due diligence in helping her in whatever ways possible which showed his affection and love for Anjali. She always maintained a respectful friendship with Vishnu and admired his aspirations of becoming a young entrepreneur in their village. Things started to turn greener and finally, Anjali got an offer from Captaurus, one of the biggest MNCs providing software services.

Vishnu knew that Anjali would get an offer and move out of their village sooner or later. But he gracefully handled her departure without showing any sign of discomfort or sadness. Anjali’s parents were more than happy to send her back to work as they knew she will feel contented only when she is busy with a job in hand and contributes. Anjali came to the city in which the company is located. But she did hide a piece of major information from her parents and Vishnu that the company would make her onboarding process virtually and would allow all the employees to work from home for the next 12 months. She had her reasons not to stay in her village and finally found a small PG to stay.

Chapter 4

Anjali completed her 6 months of probation in the new company and realized that she had become pretty close with her co-worker Sonali. Though they worked remotely, they enjoyed hanging out together during the weekends and met over dinner multiple times. Sonali slowly started to pursue Anjali to shift to her PG and stay with her in the same room. Anjali also found it as a feasible option and relocated to Sonali’s PG.

Being in the same team, they enjoyed their time together, watched movies during the breaks, and went out shopping. During one of the dinners, Anjali appreciated all the technical skills of Sonali and proposed she join a different company which she knows will surely pay her better package and Sonali can have a great career. Anjali completed sharing the details of the new opportunity by the time they finished the dinner. Sonali absorbed all the information and told Anjali that she will think about it and update after a couple of days.

On a Sunday morning, both of them were having their fresh dose of coffee and Sonali held Anjali’s hand and asked “I would like to pursue the opportunity you told Anjali. Anyway, I have spent 6+ years in this company. I want to change. Can you help me by referring my resume and also in the interview preparation?” Anjali smiled and hugged her assuring her that she was more than happy to help her best friend.

Sonali resigned from her job at Captaurus and also had to move into a different location to work on the assignments given by the new company. Anjali and Sonali felt it was the toughest time of their life to get separated. Though they knew they will keep meeting frequently and be in touch constantly over the phone, it was hard for them to live away from each other.

Chapter 5

During one of the connect with the IT service desk representative, Santosh, to get some project-related software installed, Anjali had turned on her video by mistake. The IT service desk representative got overwhelmed looking at the beauty of Anjali and silently enjoyed looking at her without informing her that her video was turned on. Santosh deliberately took more time than usual in installing the required software just to continue enjoying the sight of Anjali. She had no idea what was happening on her laptop as she was busy playing some video games on her mobile phone after she handed over the control of her laptop to Santosh. After around 30 minutes, Santosh updated Anjali that the software installation was completed and he is going to disconnect the call. Anjali thanked him for the help.

The next day, Santosh pinged Anjali over the chat window asking if the installed software was working fine. Anjali confirmed with him back about the working status and thanked him again for his help. Santosh wanted to continue the chat and started casually asking a couple of personal details. Anjali too continued to chat over. Both of them exchanged their whereabouts and finally ended up exchanging their mobile phone numbers.

Anjali suddenly remembered Vishnu and smiled. But she didn’t want to lose the attention she got from Santosh as well in her company. Santosh asked for a dinner date with Anjali over the coming weekend. But Anjali knew she needed to spend time with Sonali. She managed to convince Santosh to push the dinner date to sometime over the upcoming week after office hours. Santosh felt happy about the acknowledgment he received from Anjali.

Over their planned dinner date, Anjali and Santosh grew more closer and intimate in their friendship. Santosh started to build a dream world of having Anjali as his future wife. Anjali resonated well with all his feelings and expressions. Anjali was also equally comfortable with Santosh and was well aware of their growing relationship which was something beyond friendship. While driving back together in Santosh’s car Anjali realized that some of the moves from Santosh crossed the line. She was uncomfortable and got angry at the same time. But she didn’t express anything about it.

Santosh texted as usual to Anjali after he reached home, but Anjali didn’t respond to any of his messages. Santosh thought that she might be tired and asleep. Whereas Anjali was in a continuous long call with Sonali and shared everything that happened between Santosh and her. Sonali managed to calm down Anjali and requested her to sleep assuring her that she would visit her the next day morning without a miss.

The next day morning, before Sonali arrived at Anjali’s place, Anjali called up Santosh and blasted for his misbehavior and blamed him for everything. Santosh was little surprised to hear such offenses on him and lost his temper. He shouted back at Anjali and told her that she will have to pay a big cost for insulting him. Anjali started crying badly and at that time Sonali just entered her place and Sonali could clearly sense that something was not right there.

After listening to the whole conversation, Sonali suggested Anjali quit the company. Sonali knew about Santosh well and she could easily foresee the torture that Anjali would have to go through because of Santosh. She felt sorry for not informing or cautioning Anjali about Santosh before she left that company though she knew about Santosh’s womanizer character.

Anjali felt like she was experiencing mental trauma and without any second thought, she resigned from her job at Captaurus. All her managers, HR, and co-workers tried to convince her to continue. But Anjali was clear and stood by her decision. Santosh also knew the reason for her resignation but kept quiet to save his job in the organization. He stopped texting Anjali and deleted all his conversation text messages and call logs from his mobile phone.

It was time for Anjali to again go back to her village. But this time she chose to stay strong and relocated to the same PG where Sonali stayed and started living with her. She felt more relaxed, comfortable, and strong in the presence of Sonali.

Chapter 6

With all the flash news and breaking news hitting the TV screens, Anjali and Sonali too got the news and were shocked. Captaurus was also hit by a huge Ransomware attack and succumbed to deep trouble. The news was in a way convincing Anjali on a selfish note that even if she had managed to stay back in that company, she would have lost her job by now as it happened with her previous organization. A ransom of $750 million was demanded by the attackers to release all the data that was captured. In an unusual turn of events, the CEO of Captaurus stepped down from his role the very next day and the industry leaders criticized this move of the CEO for not taking the responsibility. The leadership team fell into deep trouble to handle this erratic situation.

With no one around helping to recover, and having observed the moves taken by Outosys when it was hit by a cyberattack, the executive board directors finally decided to pay the ransom and save the company first. They paid the entire $750 million in single-shot and recovered all the data from the attackers. Followed by this, started a big round of lay-offs in the company. Quite obviously the IT person Santosh who always eyed on Anjali lost his job too.

This made big news in the industry where two consecutive cyber attacks on Outosys and Captaurus respectively turned the economic conditions upside down. Unable to understand much of what was happening with these organizations, Anjali and Sonali decided to take a break and visit Anjali’s village for a relaxing vacation.

Chapter 7

Sonali was well treated at the village house and she enjoyed all the greens around. Anjali had called Vishnu to join them for a dinner that night. Sonali enjoyed a sumptuous dinner with Vishnu, Anjali, and her parents. Soon after the dinner, Anjali’s father placed an envelope cover in front of them and looked around. Vishnu opened the cover with curiosity and held it in a way where everyone can see the contents. It had flight tickets, passports, and a visa to Dubai.

Everyone burst into laughter and started clapping. “What happened now and why are you all laughing like this?” asked Anjali’s mother. Father went ahead and softly informed her not to worry much and requested her to make the bed and sleep.

“I never expected this in my life,” told Sonali.

“Yes, miracles do happen,” told Anjali’s father.

Vishnu finally spoke out “I completely admire you Anjali for executing our missions so successfully. We would have not seen such big money in our life.”

Anjali’s father asked her to explain how she was able to successfully exploit the companies through the cyber-attacks.

Anjali started explaining all her carefully crafted moves “I knew Outosys always had a problem with last-moment dynamics. They were unable to handle any such situation. So when an independent computer machine was given to me for a testing project which had USB and Admin rights enabled, I planted every possible virus and worm software in that machine. I anyway didn’t connect the machine to our office network as it was kind of isolated. I simply had that machine for 2 months and handed it back without cleaning up any data I had planted. I took the advantage of the so-called friendship I maintained with my manager and simply told him that I might require the same machine after 2 months again for the project testing. He also felt he will have to rework if he submitted it back to the IT team to format the machine. So he kept it in his repository as it is. Once the corona pandemic became a severe issue to handle, the company had to provide machines to their employees to work remotely. To save every passing minute, the company worked day and night to supply machines to their employees. That one machine in which I had planted virus and worms was just taken out and given to the allocated employee. That was it. The moment the employee connected that machine to the office network and started using the basic application, the worms replicated and the virus spread in the company network was faster than even the Corona Virus! The company became the victim of our attack.

When it comes to the Captaurus attack, it was pretty easier for me. I had saved the virus file created by Vishnu in my Google drive. Getting that moron Santosh into my bucket helped me perform the mission pretty efficiently. I had once asked him to install a simple work-related software for which he had told me, ‘you can just download the software and call me sweetheart, I will install it for you.’ I simply downloaded the virus file from my google drive, renamed it to the actual software name requested, and shared my screen to continue with the installation. That created the required mess in the network. The same night I went out for a dinner with him only to ensure I am out of his radar. I executed it well, broke up with him, resigned from the company and I was out of it. If we are committed to executing our missions, the universe will conspire. I believe in it.

More than that I must thank Sonali for helping me out with all the granular details I kept on asking for and Vishnu for staying in this village writing amazing malicious virus scripts. Without you, I would have not accomplished this. Ultimately, it’s you my dear father who handled all the ransomware loot so effectively to make the corporates pay us. I am happy with our teamwork.”

Anjali’s father took a deep breath and told “I am just waiting for the news from our people working in CCL, Zipro, Uncogni, Brainplant, Happiest souls, Downture, ByeBye Consultancy Service, TechVirat, and many more such companies. They are all just software engineers there, our Cyber sleeper cells. All is well. Pack your bags and have a good sleep. We are leaving India tomorrow forever!”