The lesson of this story is that even (particularly?) computer security companies cannot put up with the inconvenience of standard security precautions.
Greg Hoglund’s nightmare began on Super Bowl Sunday. On Feb. 6 the high-tech entrepreneur was sitting in his home office, trying to get to the bottom of some unusual traffic he was seeing on the Internet. Two days earlier he’d noticed troubling activity hitting the website of HBGary Federal, the Sacramento startup he helped launch in 2009. He suspected some kind of hacker assault and had spent the weekend helping to shore up the company’s systems. A few hours before Green Bay kicked off to Pittsburgh, Hoglund logged into his corporate account on Google (GOOG)—and confirmed his fears.
He couldn’t get in. Someone had changed the password and locked him out of his own e-mail system.
He used Google mail – and several people had the administrator password.