TIS special newsletter July 2017

June 28, 2017

More and more, the IT systems of companies are being targeted by Ransomware (blackmail Trojan) attacks, as can currently be seen again in the news. Unfortunately, it also happens to our customers.

We want to take the current developments as an opportunity to explain and ease worries:

Our data center, as well as the computers of the support staff, are indeed connected with customer systems over VPN. But there is and was at no time any risk that infected customer systems could infect another customer system. The VPN connections are secured against each other by a modern
firewall system that allows no communication among the systems.
Regardless of the opinion of IT experts that there is no technical possibility to spread Ransomware or viruses this way, in a case of an attack we act directly and interrupt all connections to infected customer systems, to even eliminate risks that may not be known today already.

We take the issue of IT security very seriously and hence have established a number of protective measures for quite a while now. For example, just a few weeks ago we have renewed and replaced our firewall clusters with even more modern systems. In addition, an antivirus software is installed on all systems.
Due to a continuous analysis of the write operations on the computers, unusual encryption actions can be detected and blackmail Trojans can be stopped. Of course, all of our systems are continuously fitted with the latest safety updates.
Furthermore, the areas of the system Trojans are known to install and spread over are equipped with a write protection. To get the last possible protection we have invested in a modern Backup system that allows resetting the customer systems to a particular point in time.

The technical measures are the one side. On the other hand all of our employees are sensitized to the ever-increasing threat of Trojans and worms.
We have developed an action plan, which we are continuously expanding, in which the shutdown of VPN connections to infected IT systems is only one of several immediate measures.
If one of your systems is affected, please let us know immediately, so that we can take the necessary measures on our side.

Of course, we treat this information discreetly.
Ultimately, however, we must jointly prevent the spread of malicious software, as far as technically possible.
If you need more detailed information about our technical security measures do not hesitate and talk to us personally. This information we will - also for security reasons - not publish.
If you also want to limit your risk of a widespread infrastructure failure, please contact us to learn more about our professional hosting options.

For the team of TIS
Markus Vinke
- Managing Director -