I’ve been hearing more and more from people I know as well as news stories that security is on people’s minds in one way or another. It’s a fundamental IT tenet that security should be a priority. With the rise of ransomware as well as the number of hacks and data leaks going up, things have reached a fever pitch – and I do not think we have hit a peak yet.

The reason I’m writing this blog is because every data breach and ransomware incident becomes an availability problem in one way or another. Mission critical encompasses many things – including both security and availability. Until recently not many saw the two as being in the same boat. Welcome to my world. Come in, have a dip in the pool – the water’s fine!

Let’s take the example of one of the most recent victims of ransomware, Travelex, one of the world’s largest travel-related companies. Travelex was hit with ransomware on December 31, 2019. Happy New Year, right? It hasn’t been for Travelex. They do business with lots of people including direct consumers. One of their businesses is money exchange at airports – I’ve seen their kiosks and storefronts at numerous ones including Heathrow.

They have been silent until today. On their customer information page in the UK about the incident, a video was posted from Tony D’Souza, the CEO of Travelex. First, taking nearly three weeks for a response to a very public incident is not necessarily a good thing in my estimation. I get the need to deal with things. I’m not perfect in all my communications but I’m also not Travelex. A big part of these incidents is incident management – including the public side of things. The customer page is reach, but I’m talking about the overall PR effort.

As of today, January 17, 2020, the screen grab below is their website’s front page in the USA (click to make larger).

Travelex Home Page

The Travelex home page as of 1/17/20

They are partially back up and working. According to a BBC report,

However, while he said the system used by staff is now working, there was no word on when the firm’s main UK website would be returned to service.

That means customers are still unable to order currency online, either from Travelex itself or through the network of banks that use its services, including Barclays, Lloyds, RBS, and the finance websites of Sainsbury’s and Tesco.

Ouch. That is a lot of lost business for their partners AND Travelex themselves with seemingly no end in sight. You get the idea.

Security starts well before someone accesses a databases or a system. FedEx had an issue a few years ago that cost them hundreds of millions of dollars because it got in through a subsidiary in Europe. IT needs to be able to cope with the modern threats. Most do a great job, but sadly, there will always be one attack vector you may not have thought of. Covering as many as you can is important. Not doing anything or saying, “No one will care” should have people polishing their resumes. Just look at the City of Baltimore which got hit with ransomware; it cost them at least $18.2 million.

Security is more than worrying about PII, credit card numbers, HIPAA, but as data professionals, that is one of our primary concerns. For every company that worries about what port to configure for SQL Server and frets that 1433 is insecure, worry about bigger problems like prioritizing the security of data at rest (including backups) as well as on the wire. A port scanner will find that SQL Server instance pretty quickly. Obfuscation may slow a hacker down and annoy them, not stop them. Put some effort into a robust backup strategy that has your backups safe, offsite, and tested so you know you can restore them if you get hit with something like ransomware. Even if you secure SQL Server but you have a ransomware incursion, you still may need those backups if you can’t access the systems. Everything matters here.

We always take security into account when we’re helping our customers design or evaluate solutions. Security is multi-layered. You do not want to let a security problem become an availability issue. Could your business survive being nearly completely down for over two weeks and counting like Travelex? I doubt it. Want to make sure you never find out the answer to that question? Contact us today.