Many business owners have been worried about the security of their businesses after the Kaseya ransomware attack on July 2nd. After receiving various questions about this case, we decided to share some information about the incident and how we are dealing with it.
What Happened on July 2nd?
Bad acters were able to execute a supply chain attack affecting Kaseya VSA. Kaseya VSA is software used by some managed service providers to manage computers and servers. Although the total scope is unclear, it looks like up to 40 managed service providers and thousands of computers managed by them were encrypted with ransomware.
What is a Supply Chain Attack?
Essentially, a supply chain attack is where a hacker breaches a company that provide software that is trusted and adds their own malicious code. Once the trusted software is updated on your computer, the bad guys can steal data, encrypt files or any other malicious act they may have in mind. Software providers are aware of this risk and take great care in ensuring the integrity of their software, but breaches do occur. This type of violation could happen to any software provider such as QuickBooks, Sage, Google Chrome, Microsoft, including Office or Windows, Apple or any other software provider.
If you’d like more information on a supply chain attack, Here is a link to a Wikipedia article
Has Strategic Technology Been Impacted?
No, although we use some software provided by Kaseya, the software is in no way related to Kaseya VSA. Kaseya provides us with our document management system as well as tools for monitoring the dark web for stolen credentials. Kaseya has confirmed none of these pieces of systems are impacted. Even if this software was affected, the program has no ability to allow bad acters access to our network.
How are our Clients Doing?
Our fully managed clients are not at risk from this event, because we do not use Kaseya VSA, so they are not impacted in any way. In addition, the tools we have installed on their computers have been proven to stop this particular kind of attack.
What’s next?
If you feel uncertain about what the next steps to protect your business are, we will be happy to answer your question through the phone (506) 854-2576 or you can schedule a consultation to discuss it with one of our experts.
