What’s one of the biggest lessons that you learned from 2021?
I think the first thing is the importance of transparency to those who depend on you in a time of uncertainty and crisis. That it seems like common sense. So I’m obviously talking about the [REvil ransomware] security incident that happened in July. And there’s 37,000-ish customers who depend on our stuff. And some irresponsible attention-seeking reports by people, not yourself, but others, in the hours immediately following it, scared the bejesus out of a lot of people. The lesson learned was, when people are dependent upon you and there’s a crisis, where that dependency may come into question, transparency and constant and rapid, honest, transparent communication is the only thing to do, despite what advisors may tell you. And I say that because, if you look at what we went through in July, we had had 57 of our approximately 37,000 customers getting hacked. And we’ve said this once, and then I’ll say it again: If it’s only one, it’s still too many, because it’s our job to make sure that crap doesn’t happen. And it happened
And when things like that happen, there’s a lot of uncertainty. People are scared, fear creates uncertainty. The worst thing is the lack of communication and information. There can be no question about honesty. Now people may not like what you do, but you have to respect people to say the truth and to do it frequently and often. And a lot of people, a lot of quote-unquote experts, said, ‘That’s not the playbook to follow.’ I think that a lesson learned is, that is the playbook. Not just in work, but in freaking life, because that’s how I wanna be treated. That was a big thing for me personally.
I don’t know that it was a lesson learned. It’s probably a lesson reinforced.
