A sequel to “Business People, Own Your Resilience. Own Your Destiny.”
In the pre-dawn hours of July 1, The Company Corp finance and treasury teams awoke to the unthinkable: every core system, ERP, TMS, Active Directory, you name it... locked down by a penetrating ransomware strike. What followed was not IT’s slow march toward recovery, but a full-blown thriller of manual workarounds, sleepless nights, and mounting liabilities. This account, drawn from an industry analysis of critical finance processes under a 21-day outage, exposes the raw stress and tangible risks when finance is left to fend for itself, without being prepared.
The Company Corp’s Financial Nightmare: 21 Days in the Dark
July 1, 2025 – The day The Company Corp ($5 B manufacturing) discovered its finance systems had been locked down by a sophisticated ransomware attack.
Day 1 – The Awakening
At 02:15 AM, CFO Alex Martin awoke to frantic alerts and red banners on his phone: the ERP, Treasury Management System, even corporate email were inaccessible. Within minutes, Alex was on a call with David Rossi, the CIO. Through jittery connection, David confirmed the worst: the IT crisis team was running around the clock, but realistic recovery of core finance systems would take 21 days.
“You’ll need to activate your Business Continuity Plan,” David urged.
Alex flipped open a dusty binder of PDF flowcharts, his last BCP review dated two years ago: at that time he needed to say he had one... It described “processes” in theory but offered no hands-on checklists or live drills.
Meanwhile, Head of Treasury Sarah Liu muttered to herself over her tablet:
“Almost $1 billion of cash flow cycles through here every day… 30% vital means $300 million at risk each 24 hours.”
Day 3 – The First Tremors
By mid-morning on July 4, the cracks began to show:
- Suppliers: Invoices lay unprocessed, and critical vendors warned of stopping shipments.
- Clients: No billing meant days of unbilled orders piling up, revenues were slipping through the cracks.
- Treasury: Without automated reconciliation, the team resorted to phone-banking to chase down who’d paid and who hadn’t.
Finance Controller Maria Fernandez maintained a manual priority list: rent, utilities, and a handful of strategic suppliers got pushed through via web portals, all logged by hand.
Day 7 – The Payroll Precipice & Insurance Quagmire
After a week without systems, the heat turned unbearable:
Sarah Liu (to herself):
“If we miss the July 15 payroll, we risk legal fines and total morale collapse.”
They prepped an 80% “safety-net” payroll via manually formatted SEPA files, signed off by Alex and two board members.
In parallel, Alex dialed their cyber-insurance broker, only to hit a wall of clauses:
- Proof of up-to-date backups (last taken six months ago)
- Mandatory forensic audit before any payout
- Exclusions for “acts of war”, a catch-all clause they’d never noticed
The broker’s rapid-fire caveats made clear: unlocking funds would be a marathon, not a sprint, offering zero relief for daily operations.
Day 10 – Freezing the Vault
By day 10, every daily cash process was ten days behind:
- All non-essential expenses frozen; investments and purchases shelved.
- Credit line draws postponed, without system-generated invoices, banks refused to advance funds.
- Employee chatter turned grim: “Will we even get paid on time?”
Despite relentless effort, manual workarounds creaked under the weight of humanity and error.
Day 14 – Social Unrest and Shutdown
On July 15, only half the payroll landed in accounts.
- Logistics staff staged a walk-out, halting inbound raw materials.
- Vendors demanded cash-upfront or suspended services, triggering penalty fees.
- Credit covenants defaulted silently, banks declared a “technical breach.”
Production lines lapsed into chaos as parts ran dry, and the finance team, exhausted and demoralized, began to fear they’d hit rock bottom.
Day 21 – The Abyss
Three weeks in, The Company Corp had:
- Missed over three weeks of revenue, hundreds of millions evaporated.
- Incurred back-log payables and receivables, a mountain of reconciliations lay ahead.
- Factory stopped due to lack of supply. Restarting it will take at least 5 additional days.
- Burned through its cash reserves; emergency credit draws were impossible without digital documentation.
The crisis had metastasized into a full-blown financial catastrophe, with legal filings delayed, tax deadlines blown, and auditors poised to issue qualifications.
At year’s end, the total cost: $350 million.
- <5% covered IT rebuild and crisis management
- >95% was pure business loss: halted sales, missed payments, penalties, and reputational damage
"If you are not prepared, or fully rely on IT to go back live (but in 21 days), you are just in big troubles! You need to build and own your business operational resilience to ensure continuity of your most vital activity. IT’s job is to protect it, make it stable, running, while pushing for innovation and business providing tools, automation and efficiency. If IT disruption happens; whether a cyber-attack, outages, fire, or other incident, IT objective it to build it and bring it back to normal in the shortest period of time, but it can take time; meanwhile, Finance department is responsible for salary or supplier payments, managing treasury, and keeping the business alive. you own you operational resilience & continuity ! ". CEO sharing lesson learned.
