I take security incident management very seriously. For most of my career, I’ve been a part of a team that is responsible for protecting the enterprise from cyber threats. I jump into action to understand what is going on and contain the threat as soon as possible. Today, I will share with you one of those fateful events from several years ago.

The day started out like any other day. I read emails and attended meetings. Things were off to a good start. Then, it happened. A team member responsible for physical security stopped by my office. She told me that one of the security guards found a small black box hidden in the shrubbery outside our headquarters building. The security guard found it on his normal sweep and insisted that it wasn’t there the day before.

I took a quick look at the small black box and my spidey senses immediately told me something nefarious was going on. The box was nondescript, devoid of any branding or markings. I was able to see a wireless transmitter and battery on-board. It looked homemade.

In an instant, my mind went to the worst-case-scenario. Someone was trying to hack us. This someone knew what they were doing. This someone was intentionally targeting us. This was bad, very bad.

I leaped into full-blown security incident management mode. I assembled my team and after a short briefing, we divided the work along several parallel paths. I notified my boss, the CIO, of the situation. I instructed the physical security team to review the DVRs to pinpoint the footage for when the device was placed. I reached out to our advanced threat monitoring team, putting them on alert and standby. I instructed our wireless network engineer to comb through the logs on the Wireless Intrusion Protection System that we had recently installed. Finally, I gave the actual device to the smartest and geekiest engineer on my staff so he could reverse engineer the box and see how it works.

While everyone worked independently, I made my rounds checking in with each of them periodically to see what progress had been made. I kept the small team of stakeholders updated as the situation developed.

The first development came from the physical security team. From reviewing DVR footage, they came to the conclusion that the device was not there the day before, but was placed over night. The visibility wasn’t as good at night, so it was taking them time to zero-in on the actual placement footage.

The Wireless Intrusion Protection System was completely clean. Nothing at all to report. That didn’t give me much comfort. I just assumed the hacker was sophisticated enough to evade our detections.

My ubergeek engineer was making great progress reverse engineering the black box. He had it apart on his desk in several pieces and was identifying each component by the markings on the chipsets. The first thing he was able to identify was that the wireless transmitter had relatively low power and low throughput. It also did not appear to operate on the common WiFi bands. That was interesting, but not conclusive.

From this we determined that this black box probably wasn’t attacking our wireless network. That was a positive development for sure, but it left so many unanswered questions. What on earth is this thing? Why was it hidden in our shrubbery at night? Who would do such a thing? My conspiratorial mind was racing.

I revisited the physical security team, and no further progress had been made. Then I checked back with the reverse engineering effort. Additional research had rendered various sensor circuitry, but it was difficult to pinpoint what it did. Eventually, in the deep recesses of the alibaba.com website, my engineer figured out what it was. It was a remote transmitter for a consumer weather station. Within moments of that realization, the physical security team came by my desk and determined that the object wasn’t placed in the shrubbery, but it fell from above. That’s why it was so hard to find on the footage.

We looked above the shrubbery, and there was a balcony adjacent to our executive offices. One of our executives had a desktop weather station in his office with the remote transmitter perched on the balcony ledge. All it took was a gusty night to send it off the ledge, into the shrubbery, descending the following work day into chaos.

I got the pleasure of informing the CIO of the embarrassing, but ultimately good news. I also called our advanced threat monitoring team and let them know that they could stand down. Explaining why was a bit humbling to say the least. To this day, I cannot figure out why a consumer product would be devoid of all branding and markings. Looking back, that’s what set me off down the wrong path. Productivity that day was a total loss, but on the bright side, we didn’t get hacked.

Admittedly, us security-folk get a bit paranoid. We also have very active imaginations. Looking back on this, I honestly don’t know what I should have done differently. Disregarding potential threats isn’t the answer. Just because you aren’t paranoid, it doesn’t mean the bad guys aren’t out to get you! We have a responsibility to respond to all credible threats until they can be safely discredited. I shared this story with you to make you laugh and make you think. Are you getting complacent in your security incident response? Perhaps a “false positive” like this is just what your team needs to stay on their toes. You never know when the real one will hit.