Looks like Facebook cyber security officials do not retort to a black board and chalk methodology these days; they simply hack their own employees’ accounts to teach them a lesson. I guess the age old PowerPoint Presentations, white boards and chart papers are also out of the equation when the company goes as far as compromising the accounts of its own employees for training’s sake!

What Does “Hacktober” Mean to Facebook Insiders?

“Hacktober” is more like a ritual at Facebook. You see, each yeah, during the month of October, Facebook officials come up with a series of hack attempts, security SNAFUs, false alarms and anything that its cyber security team can fall victim to.

In a way, “Hacktober” is also a way of measuring the lacking areas of the social media platform, while teaching the employees up-to-date methods of securing Facebook user accounts. During October, the employees at Facebook are expected to keep tabs on any security related issues so that they can be reported to the concerned departments within the company.

Ryan McGeehan, one of the directors on Facebook security team says, “Webinars don’t really fit in here. We wanted to do something unique in line with our hacking culture to teach employees about upcoming cyber security issues.”

Officials at Facebook believe that by taking the sense of fear, pranks and excitement naturally associated with the month of October, it would be a fun and rewarding thing for the employees to have their accounts hacked!

The hack attempts and threats are designed specially by a separate team of experts at Facebook. These guys are responsible for coming up with new methods or unknown security loopholes to try and pinpoint where Facebook lacks most with respect to security.

After “Hacktober” was over, all the employees were given a thorough presentation about each hack, explaining its origin, history and the reason why someone from outside the company would attempt to do so.

McGeehan also said, “We launched a worm to simulate the growth of Spam on Facebook and other sites, as this was part of our grand finale round.” While employees kept whining about being overloaded with spam and malicious attacks, Facebook officials rejoiced in the spirit of success.

By the way, the cyber security department employees at Facebook don’t give a shit to hacks, cracks and such issues. They only pay attention and think of creating solutions once the problem has occurred, instead of being prepared for it already.

Don’t take my word for it, one of the insiders at Facebook says, “The biggest challenge we face with security awareness is that employees in general do not really care about it until there is an issue. At that point, it is too late. “Hacktober” is there to give them a real life experience about such possible events that are likely to occur.”

This entry was posted on Monday, December 3rd, 2012 at 8:33 AM and is filed under Latest News, National News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.