Sipping my coffee, I followed Todd into a conference room, where Chuck and five other stereotypical IT guys were tapping away at laptops.
“Helen, glad you could finally make it,” Chuck piped up, barely looking at me as I entered the room. I curled my lip slightly in disdain but otherwise didn’t respond.
Stay unassuming. Quiet. Blend into the background…
“There’s been suspicious activity on the firewall. I’m getting alerts and notifications that there have been some efforts to gain entry to our network….”
Todd droned on and on. I barely listened. I logged on to the network, and with a few taps I could see exactly what Todd the bore was talking about.
I frowned. These weren’t “attacks.” This wasn’t an attempt to tear things down. Cause chaos. Destroy everything. This was subtle. Probing. Looking for vulnerabilities.
While Todd and his IT cronies were running around trying to plug the hole, whoever this was had already slipped in. Poking around. Checking things out.
Reading emails.
Becoming a voyeur. A shadow that didn’t belong.
Whoever it was was already here.
My heart hammered in my chest. I didn’t like being snooped on. Not when I was used to doing the snooping.
This all felt so familiar.
The sneakiness. This was being done with skill.
“Whoever it was didn’t hack the system. My firewalls are too strong,” Todd preened. His chest puffed out with self-importance.
The dumb-ass had no idea.
“We need to monitor the situation. Harriet, perhaps you can help out Todd’s team and set up new notifications.”
I opened my mouth, ready to explain that the system was already compromised. Ready to share my knowledge. To do the right thing.
“Oh, that’s all right, Chuck. We have the best people on it. No sense in muddying the waters.” Todd gave me a patronizing smile. “I’m not sure Hannah knows how to architect an environment. I don’t have the time to teach her, I’m afraid.”
Dick.
I closed my mouth. No way I’d tell him about the obvious hacker presence in the network now. Let the whole place fall apart for all I cared.
“Yep. Don’t want to take up any more of your time,” I muttered, getting to my feet. I turned to my boss. “I’m going to get back to work, since it seems Todd has everything under control.”
Chuck waved a hand in dismissal. “Sure. That’s fine. But we may need you again.” He still hadn’t bothered to look at me.
I walked back to my desk, wondering about the hacker who had compromised Holt’s network. What were they looking for?
Sitting down, I fired up my VPN and started to poke around. Looking for something to identify the culprit. I was better than most at finding the trails, but the average IT lackey would never be able to find where the vulnerabilities lay.
I frowned as I saw what this anonymous individual was looking through.
Emails.
Specifically mine.
What the hell?
Upon closer inspection I realized that my desktop security had been dinged. They hadn’t broken through because my layers were vastly superior to what Holt IT employed, but the evidence was there.
I swallowed thickly.
