A Cautionary Tale from the Frontlines of Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity breaches don’t always come from external threats. Sometimes, the risk is sitting at one of your own desks—or working remotely from halfway across the world.

At a mid-sized manufacturing company in Texas, one of their employees quietly outsourced his entire job to an offshore contractor. Without the company’s knowledge, he paid someone overseas to perform his day-to-day responsibilities while he collected a full paycheck and focused on other personal projects.

The scheme went unnoticed for months. IT didn’t flag it. HR didn’t see it. Not even the employee’s direct supervisor suspected anything was off. The truth only surfaced when the offshore contractor stopped getting paid and threatened to leak sensitive company data.

This wasn’t a criminal hacker or a ransomware gang. It was a freelancer with access to production specs, machine data, and internal systems—someone with no background check, no NDA, and no formal relationship with the company.

If that doesn’t make business leaders stop and rethink their internal controls, it should.

The Real Risk Isn’t Just Tech—It’s Trust Without Process

This incident highlights a blind spot we see too often: many companies invest in strong firewalls, antivirus solutions, and VPNs—but neglect to audit who has access, how roles are monitored, and whether job responsibilities match system behavior.

Cybersecurity isn’t just about preventing outside intrusions. It’s about ensuring internal alignment, accountability, and oversight.

Especially in industries like manufacturing and logistics, where production data and vendor specs are business-critical, unauthorized access or data exfiltration can result in more than just reputational damage. It can bring operations to a halt, violate contractual obligations, and destroy competitive advantage.

Five Steps Every Company Should Take Immediately:

1. Audit access rights. Review who can log into what—and remove dormant or mismatched access.

2. Align systems with roles. Make sure the tools people access match their actual responsibilities.

3. Monitor behavior, not just logins. Track for anomalies in usage patterns that might suggest fraud.

4. Create a culture of internal reporting. Team members should feel safe flagging unusual behavior without fear of retaliation.

5. Partner with IT teams who understand your industry. Cybersecurity isn’t one-size-fits-all—manufacturers face different threats than law firms or clinics.

Houston Businesses Are Not Immune

As a cybersecurity provider based here in Houston, I’ve seen firsthand how quickly trust can become a vulnerability. As companies continue to embrace hybrid work, global talent, and digital tools, internal oversight must evolve to keep pace.

The question isn’t whether your systems are secure from outside attack. The question is whether they’re built to catch the threats already inside your organization.

And in this case, the cost of not knowing was almost everything.

Nadeem Azhar is the founder and CEO of PC.Solutions.Net, a Houston-based Managed Security Services Provider. He speaks regularly on cybersecurity and digital risk at venues such as the New York Bar Association and the New York Academy of Medicine.