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Bret Skilling: infosec specialist par excellence; card shark extraordinaire; connoisseur of fine women everywhere; Captain of the 2500-ton luxury transport Pallas, late of the Alliance Cruiser Harmony and member in good standing of the Beylix Merchant Marine and Naval Auxiliar; former Iver Harrison Executive Vice President of Information Security.
Born in XXXX, the son of prominent Perseus City Central Medical Facility surgeons Drs. Amaya and Lucas Skilling of Londinium, Bret graduated cum laude and proceeded to earn a Master's in Information Security from Perseus Technical University, was subsequently recruited by the prestigious Iver Harrison Group, Inc. and swiftly rose to Executive Vice President in charge of Information Security. |
The Fall of Iver Harrison
In XXXX, Bret Skilling was promoted from an accelerated position as Chief of Counter-Exploitation to Executive Vice President of Information Security following the unexpected departure of his predecessor Michael Wong for cited reasons of family. The first month with Skilling at the helm was a rocky one, marked according to insiders by persistent network problems, data corruption, and numerous security glitches, eventually culminating in the absolute destruction of Iver Harrison's data records from personnel records to account balances.
Although arbitration continues, the estimated losses could exceed 520 billion credits in a worst case scenario. Iver Harrison possessed 2.7B credits in capital and a combined asset worth of 14B credits, but was leveraged at a ratio of 35:1. Even financial optimists place the expected damage at over 15B credits. The Ministry of Finance has placed a freeze on all accounts and securities related to Iver Harrison to include pensions, hedge and mutual funds, personal bank accounts, corporate paper and others until a full audit has been completed. Regardless of the audit's outcome, Iver Harrison's bankruptcy filing has rendered every share of the former investment banking titan worthless.
According to Parliamentary testimony from former Iver Harrison Executive Vice President of Human Capital Management Everard Feldston, Skilling's attention in the last days was devoted almost exclusively to technical and physical investigation of a phantom pattern of intrusions described by Feldston as an "elaborately imagined smokescreen concealing his ill preparation for such a complex and demanding position." Any documentation related to Skilling's efforts is believed destroyed along with the totality of Iver Harrison's computer records.
Former InfoSec colleague Vogel Marksman additionally alleged that Skilling relied on internal connections and special favors for multiple undeserved promotions during his tenure with the firm.
While not convicted of any wrongdoing, widespread sentiment in the Core worlds holds Skilling culpable for his failure to prevent the catastrophe.
