Risky Biz Feature: "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face"

<p>There is no weekly news show this week. Instead, we’re running this feature interview with Michael Montoya, the CISO of Equinix. This isn’t a sponsored interview or anything like that, this podcast was prepared with support from the Hewlett Foundation’s Cyber Initiative.</p> <p>Equinix has 9,000 staff and operates 220 data centres globally. Its annual revenue is in the order of USD$6bn. In September 2020 it was attacked by criminals who deployed the Netwalker ransomware on its corporate network. The attackers demanded a USD$4.5m ransom payment for service restoration and to keep the data they stole from the company private.</p> <p>This interview has taken a while to organise, but when I first found out Michael was open to the idea of talking through the incident I jumped at it. It’s extremely rare for CISOs to be made available to talk about events like this, but it’s something that should happen more often. We can learn a lot by dissecting these types of incidents publicly. Enjoy!</p>