WE'RE STILL INVESTIGATING HOW IT HAPPENED, IT'S TOO CONFIDENTIAL TO SAY MORE, BUT REST ASSURED EVERYTHING IS OK NOW. - The IMF, June 2011
This excuse is often used by organisations that decide to mop up media interest with an early announcement confirming investigations are underway (we're taking this seriously) while reassuring people everything is OK now (in spite of not having solved the source of the alleged data breach which is presumably still active/open)
This deft and authoritative touch was used this June, by The International Monetary Fund (IMF), when they confirmed they had become the latest victim of a hacking attempt to their network.
Even though the IMF spokesman rejected to comment on the extend of the attack, whether data breach happened to confidential information on the economic health of its 187 member countries or any systems were infiltrated, he said that they are "investigating" it. "We had an incident," said IMF spokesman David Hawley. "We're investigating it and the fund is completely functional."
BeyondTrust says: "For the uninitiated, this shrouds the idea of data protection in an air of mystery, i.e the hacker was a sophisticated operator, as opposed to say the majority of hackers who target weakly protected network passwords as their first line of defence."
Scott Lang, Sr. Director, Product Marketing at BeyondTrust
Scott Lang has nearly 20 years of experience in technology product marketing, currently guiding the product marketing strategy for BeyondTrust’s privileged account management solutions and vulnerability management solutions. Prior to joining BeyondTrust, Scott was director of security solution marketing at Dell, formerly Quest Software, where he was responsible for global security campaigns, product marketing for identity and access management and Windows server management.