Cedar Falls hit with an ice storm...our customers hit with a MailEnable exploit.
What a weekend a couple of weeks ago. Our Cedar Falls office was hit with a nasty ice storm (Chicago was about 2 degrees above getting the same thing). On top of that, a variant of a known MailEnable exploit was unleashed that weekend, swooping down like the freezing North wind over the cornfields.
Our DEFCON 3, 2, and 1 customers could rest easy, however. As soon as we were alerted to the exploit by one of our vendors, SWSoft, we went to work to process the latest hotfix from MailEnable and apply it to the managed servers. Consequently a very small percentage of our managed customers were affected (most likely hit before we were able to install the patch). Our unmanaged (DEFCON 4 and 5) customers, theirs was a different story.
Since these customers do not get the benefit of automatic updates to their OS’es and services, they were exposed to the exploit if they weren’t on top of the fixes. These customers found their servers spewing out SPAM and chewing up their bandwidth…or worse. The remedy was a reinstall of the OS and all the patches applied…all at additional support cost.
Every few days I respond to a customer about their DEFCON level, most of the time at the request of the tech department. Usually these customers are DEFCON 4 or 5 (self-managed or unmanaged). These levels require a certain level of expertise as well as a higher level of diligence when keeping the server updated. It’s a daunting task, especially with the constant march of technology, updates, (and yes) bad guy hackers. More than likely, it’s just a matter of time before bad things happen.
So a move to our managed services allows you to rest easy while listening to the wind howling outside, coating everything with that weird clear frosting. You’re nice and warm and your server is nice and secure with FastServers.Net staff working 24/7/365 to keep things up-to-date. Let us weather the issues.
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