Sometimes People Surprise Me

When people are angry reasonable people do unreasonable things. For the past month I have been dealing with the fallout of a malicious attack on our internal systems web site and support server.

To our customers I offer my sincere apology for the demise of our web site for the past week. We have done our best to restore it quickly but all takes time. It will return very soon.

Initially I thought that these attacks were simply prompted by anger, but upon further investigation I discovered that fraud was at the heart of their plans. All our customers can rest assured that the perpetrators of these crimes will be dealt with by the courts and will be held responsible for their crimes.

To all of you out there, I recommend the following:

• separate system administration from operational personnel
• triple check all backups
• never subcontract system administration work short term
• automate changing all passwords so it can be done across your systems instantly if possible