One month since the incident, Hope McGarry tells CRN Australia what she has learned from the incident.
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Hope McGarry, managing director, Ingram Micro Australia
It’s been nearly a month since Ingram Micro was hit by a SafePay ransomware attack, and Hope McGarry, managing director for the Australian arm of the distributor reflects on the turbulent month.
On July 5, reports began surface that the global distributor was the victim of an attack impacting its Xvantage platform and the Impulse license provisioning platform.
To counteract the attack, the company took its website and ordering system down. Four days later the company reported its systems were back online.
CRN Australia sat down exclusively with McGarry, to discuss what’s next for the distie and what she’s learned from the incident.
While the company’s platforms are back online McGarry said the investigations are still ongoing and will take time to run its course.
“But for us, at the moment, we’re very much focused on business as usual, servicing our customers and our vendors as best as we can, and making sure that we put them absolutely at the centre of everything we do,” she explained.
McGarry said she realised in these types of situations you do not have a lot of control.
“Leading through that with a lot of ambiguity and not really knowing everything that’s going on, it was a very live, active situation, you learn a lot about resiliency,” she explained.
“You learn a lot about navigating ambiguity and making sure that you focus on the things that are within your control in those types of situations. There’s so much that’s not in your control.”
As a leader, McGarry said it was about keeping the team focused on what they could control and keeping the communication lines with their partners and vendors as clear as possible.
“It’s about remaining super resilient, very calm, and focusing on the things that you can control when there’s a lot that’s outside of your control,” she said.
“I learned a lot about myself as a leader.”
In a high stress situation like a ransomware attack, McGarry she said it is pivotal that leaders do not hypothesise or overthink.
“You have to work with the information that you have, which was quite limited,” she said.
“Anything I had was basically what was appearing in market anyway. It’s just about focusing on what you do know, focusing on what you can control.”
McGarry confessed there were moments during the incident that was challenging at times for her, “Just as a human, you want to make sure your customers, and your vendors are good. You want to make sure your team are good.
“The focus was very much just about people, making sure that the people that we serve – my internal team, customer and vendor base – were as informed as possible and making sure that they were the focus of everything we did in terms of the recovery.”
Response from partners and vendors
She said Ingram Micro Australia’s customer base was “exceptionally supportive” during the ordeal.
“it’s one of the things I love about this whole community, having been in IT my whole career, in various roles over the years.
“The support that we received, the personal text messages that I got, the calls that I got, the emails, just a one line email from a from customers, saying, ‘we feel for you right now, if there’s anything we can do, let us know’,” she explained.
McGarry said she had customers offering to bring in food to the Ingram Micro team while they dealt with the incident.
“They knew we were working very hard, and the level of support we had was testament to how much we focus on relationships in the business,” she said.
“I was saying to my leadership group, you don’t get that level of support if you don’t invest in relationships, and because we invest in relationships, and we truly care about those relationships very deeply, you get that level of support.”
While they received support in the form of food and encouragement, McGarry said the company was still met with some criticism.
“There are always going to be people that think that you could have done it better, you could have responded differently, you could have been more timely, and that’s okay,” she explained.
“You have to know what you know to be true, that’s your North Star, that’s what guides you.
“We did the best we could with the information that we had and the feedback from the customer community has been exceptionally positive.”
In these types of situations, you can never be truly prepared, McGarry explained.
“You have your business continuity plans and those types of things in place globally and locally, but I don’t know if you can ever truly be prepared, because there’s a human element,” she said.
“You’re a leader, and you’re leading this beautiful, amazing business, and I’m so proud to lead, so humbled to lead, and so passionate about it. But you’re also a human being as well. I’m not sure you can ever truly be prepared, but you get prepared pretty quick.”
Advice to other leaders
While she is not one to give advice to other people, but when asked what she would tell other execs who may go through this situation, she did have one thing to say.
“Stay as calm as possible,” she explained.
“People look to you to test the temperature as a leader, they’re looking at you to say, are we good? Are we green? Are we amber? Are we red?
“As a leader, in any situation, it’s absolutely critical that you lead from the front, and you give your customers, vendors and teams a level of comfort that you’ve got it, you are navigating it, and that you are there to support them.”
She noted that this is one of the hardest things to do as a leader.
“People do look to you to test the temperature and if you don’t look good, then people feel that very quickly,” she said.
“That energy transfer is really important, managing your energy and making sure that you’re staying as positively as possible.”
Another key trait to have is communicating as clearly and constantly as possible.
“Constant communication is critical,” she stated.
“The worst thing you can do in any situation is leave people wondering, because they’ll start to hypothesise and about what is and isn’t, and that’s never helpful.”
