In life, there will be moments that stick with you. For Bitsight CISO Chris Campbell, one was being a participant in a tabletop exercise (TTX) at a past employer that showed a fake news briefing of a ransomware attack against his organization.

“I got chills watching the video and watching the faces of the executive committee watch the video,” Campbell, who is also Bitsight’s SVP and head of technology, said. “It was something that hit home because it was our name [and] our logo.”

A TTX is a discussion-based roleplaying activity meant to gauge an organization’s ability to respond to a cybersecurity threat. They often are informal and performed by key stakeholders involved in an organization’s incident response plan.

How proper planning prevents potential problems.—BM

An unexpected sell-order of 75,000 contracts (worth $4.1 billion, according to an SEC report filed a few months later) led to a chain reaction of buys, sells, buybacks, sellbacks, and panicked exits.

In the span of about 10 minutes, in what became known as the “flash crash,” the Dow Jones Industrial Average (which today includes companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple) fell by about 9%.

Normally that kind of drastic downfall would mean a tough day for then floor governor of the New York Stock Exchange Jay Woods. But he’d had the day off.

“I’ll never forget: My Motorola flip phone lit up with text messages saying, ‘What is going on?!’ It was my brother. And I’m like, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Woods told us, recalling the stock market slide, an event that occurred while he was cleaning a park during a Goldman Sachs-led community service project.

What the flash crash taught the stock market.—BH