Cyber Tales: Timber! When Digital Goes Down
When digital systems crash, cyber insurance keeps business moving. See how NorthCan Timber turned outage into resilience.
When external tech systems fail, cyber insurance can save the day.
Places, industries, and names have been changed to preserve client privacy.
Chainsaws don’t run on Windows. But payroll, logistics and safety reporting do.
Lana Morris was used to early mornings. In forestry, you get up before the sun if you want to stay ahead of the day. She poured her coffee, opened her laptop, and prepared for the usual routine: check in with the remote logging camps, review yesterday’s load reports, and confirm payroll files were processed. But that morning, nothing worked. Emails wouldn’t send. Reports wouldn’t load. Her screen greeted her with a blue error message and a hard stop.
She wasn’t alone. Across NorthCan Timber Resources – an established mid-sized forestry company with offices in Northern BC and operations stretching across Alberta – screens were freezing, systems were locking up, and phones were lighting up with staff wondering what was going on. From payroll to logistics to HR, the entire backbone of the business had ground to a halt.
“Our systems just… stopped. Blue screens. Black screens. Frozen screens.”
At first, Lana assumed the worst: a cyber-attack. The signs were all there – sudden system failures, no clear warning, no access to core software. She spent those first tense hours scanning security logs, checking firewall reports, and calling their managed IT provider. But soon, it became clear: this wasn’t NorthCan’s problem alone — and it wasn’t targeted.
It was global.
What had caused it? A critical external IT failure.
A faulty update from a major security software vendor triggered crashes across millions of Windows systems. Airlines, banks, hospitals, manufacturers — all affected. Some froze for hours, others for days. It wasn’t criminal. It was a software screw-up. And it revealed just how tightly digital systems are linked — until digital systems fail.
NorthCan wasn’t even a direct customer of the vendor that pushed the bad update — but their managed IT services were. And that was enough to pull their systems offline, from city offices to remote camps.
When Systems Fail, Coverage is Crucial
NorthCan’s leadership team had seen their share of crises — forestry has plenty of those — but this was unfamiliar ground. Lana brought in Emma White from Finance and Kevin Liu from HR. Phones rang nonstop. Crews were out of sync. Payroll was stuck. Everything that relied on a working screen was down.
And they weren’t even sure if their cyber insurance applied. There was no hacker, no malware. Just… broken systems.
“I’ll admit, I wasn’t sure what our policy covered,” Lana said. “But I remembered our broker talking about the BOXX Hackbusters. She said to keep their number handy, even if I wasn’t filing a formal claim, and ask for Jack.”
So, they called. Jack Brooks — Head of Hackbusters and BOXX’s virtual Chief Information Security Officer (vCISO) — took the meeting. With years of experience advising businesses through cyber incidents and technology disruptions, Jack was well-positioned to help.
Jack confirmed: this was covered. It wasn’t a breach, but it was a breakdown — and their contingent business interruption coverage applied.
His advice was simple: log everything, track downtime, document costs.
He reminded them: revenue isn’t the only loss. Travel, overtime, productivity dips; they all count.
“Just because it isn’t malicious doesn’t mean it isn’t disruptive,” Jack said. “This is exactly why we cover this for our BOXX business clients.” Jack added, “All-in-one insurance is exactly that.”
From Chainsaws to Clipboards: Practical Help in Motion
With Jack’s help, Lana and her team focused fast. Payroll and logistics took top priority. If logs couldn’t move and paychecks didn’t land, nothing else mattered.
They turned to manual processes. Kevin ordered timesheets to be logged by hand and copied into spreadsheets so the team could easily import the data once they were back online. The team tracked every idle load and every extra hour spent keeping things moving the business running the old-fashioned way.
Eventually, technicians traveled by truck, ferries, and floatplanes to reach NorthCan’s most remote camps to manually restore systems. It wasn’t fast. It wasn’t cheap. But it was necessary.
“Jack said, ‘You’ve got coverage. Now here’s how to make it clean and fair.’ That took a lot of stress off,” recalled Emma. “It was a relief to speak to someone who understood the situation and had practical advice. The vendor behind the bad update was too busy dealing global chaos to take our calls—but Jack was there, ready to help us get organized.”
Jack also helped with internal messaging. This wasn’t a hack, but it was a crisis. Employees and stakeholders needed the facts.
And when systems came back? Jack saw an opportunity.
“When stuff breaks, people pay attention,” he said. “It’s the perfect time to make sure everyone — from the field to leadership — knows how to spot red flags and respond the right way. That’s why we rolled out a refresher for NorthCan using our full cybersecurity training program.”
A Solid Claim
NorthCan’s claim covered the essentials: technician travel, overtime, lost revenue from missed deliveries, and the productivity losses during the manual workarounds. The right prep and documentation kept the process smooth.
“I won’t say it was easy,” Lana admitted. “That would be stretching it. But Jack made it easier. He didn’t just give advice – he made sure we did everything we needed to prove our claim.”
“Honestly, I didn’t expect an insurance provider to actually help us pull off a clean claim,” Emma added. “That part surprised me.”
From Stumped to Sorted
The outage was a wake-up call. Even in industries rooted in nature, tech is business-critical. Jack makes this clear to every client: cyber coverage isn’t just about hackers and ransomware. It’s about resilience. External system failures are part of today’s risk environment and preparation matters.
“We prep for storms. We prep for fire.” Jack explains. “This is just another kind of disruption we have to prepare for.”
Clear-Cutting the Confusion
A global outage can hit as hard as a cyber-attack. It’s not always about bad actors. Sometimes systems just break. And when they do, you need coverage that reflects how your business actually runs. For sectors like forestry, where digital systems run quietly behind the scenes, the risk is real. NorthCan’s story proves:
- Third-party systems can fail
- Insurance needs to reflect operational risk
- The right guidance turns policy into protection
Cyberboxx Business helps companies prepare, protect, and respond when the unexpected strikes.
Interested in more real-life cyber stories?
Sign-up for the BOXX Newsletter today.
Join over 5,000+ others that receive our newsletter updates. Filled with expert advice and product announcements to help prevent a cyber incident. Get insider access to news around BOXX innovations, cyber tips and case studies that allow you to stay up to date on all things cyber.
Related posts
Cyber Tales: The $50,000 Conversation That Never Happened
A quick payment. A fake deal. A big mistake. A PR firm falls for a $50K AI-driven email scam—see how BOXX helped them recover and why cyber insurance is vital for every business.
Cyber Tales: The Hijacked Wellness Studio
BOXX Client Profile: Chelsea Lagimodiere
Owner of a thriving wellness studio
