Posted on 01/04/2020 8:00:04 AM PST by DUMBGRUNT
An Arkansas-based telemarketing firm sent home more than 300 employees and told them to find new jobs after IT recovery efforts didn't go according to plan following a ransomware incident that took place at the start of October 2019.
"Unfortunately, approximately two months ago our Heritage servers were attacked by malicious software that basically 'held us hostage for ransom' and we were forced to pay the crooks to get the 'key' just to get our systems back up and running," wrote Sandra Franecke, the company's CEO, in the letter sent to employees.
(Excerpt) Read more at zdnet.com ...
Each Director maintained duplicate components of the system. Every couple of months they would meet for breakfast and practice rebuilding the system.
IIRC he said "80%+ companies that lose their data, are gone in two years"
Telemarketing firm? It couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch LOL!
Who do I call seven times a day every day to give my condolences?
;-)
Why does he/she think the employees can take the company to court and make them pay a settlement? Does Arkansas have some law that you have to stay in business and keep people employed?
lol
I feel for the employees but a telemarketing company biting the dust is no great loss and it reflects on the IT department.
Mega props to the hackers.
300 employees at a telemarketing company=boiler room.
Eff em...
I can’t even leave the ringers on my phone on because of these bastards.
Phone rings every 10 minutes all day long, every last call is either telemarketers or scammers.
We still have a landline because it’s part of our internet package. I’ll bet it’s 200:1 scammer calls to real actual phone calls
Telemarketers? Is that why my phone isn’t ringing as much this week?
It appears that the extortionists here didn’t supply a key that worked after the ransom was paid.
If I had the company, I’d sue the Crypto currency exchange for a refund. The Bitcoin and other “exchanges” should be held civilly liable for their role in the criminal enterprise. Shut them down (or make them start tracking the money) and the problem will go away.
Now that is a creative ad for PC MATIC virus software. Kudos to them. 8>)
It’s hilarious. They are running Windows. But if they paid Microsoft and their IT department to deploy the infrastructure on even Microsoft’s Azure cloud, this would not have happened. Microsoft knows they make crap operating systems for the commodity PC market, and they don’t care. Microsoft’s future business model will be to back away from Windows. I knew their operating system products were total crap even 30+ years ago. It’s so funny to see them betting their future on Linux in the Cloud and their application products. They may even go the way of Sun eventually a send up as has-been in 10 years, with some company buying their Cloud assets.
I don’t give out my cellphone number unless absolutely necessary (financial institutions that require two factor authentication, etc). I absolutely don’t answer my cellphone any more. Almost every call is either a student loan refinance scam or an IRS scam. I’ll check voice mails once a week or so.
There is no excuse for any company or government entity to ever succumb to ransomware. I guess they saved a lot of money by skipping backups.
I absolutely don’t answer my cellphone any more.
***************
Yep cell phones have made just about everyone the equivalent of
a one armed paper hanger. The cell phone is dedicated to one hand
and that being held up in front of your face all the time.
I moved from Michigan to Maryland ten years ago and never changed my cell number.
Anyone from Michigan who may call me is already on my list so whenever I get a Michigan caller ID number, it’s a telemarketer and gets ignored.
My cell is also my work phone so I give the number out daily.
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