SV0 / Sohost Platform Post Incident Report

SV0 / Sohost Platform Post Incident Report - www.sovision.com/uploads/pdf/SV0-soHost-Post-Incident-Report-030314.pdf 

Update on SV0 / SoHost Issues 01/03/2014 – 22:11

Update on SV0 / SoHost Issues 01/03/2014 – 22:11  SV0/soHost is now fully back online in our new Cloud Data Centre and stabilised, this includes all elements of the system (Linux & Windows Web Hosting, FTP, C-Panel Access and POP/IMAP Email) however if you are still experiencing issues with your website or email please call us on 0845 450 3669 so we can look into this for you, as it is likely to be caused by a DNS issue. Once again we apologise for the extended outage to our customers.

Update on SV0 / SoHost Issues 28/02/2014 – 14:27 SV0/soHost is now back online in our new Cloud Data Centre however there is an issue with a configuration on the server.  Some customers may experience issues with their website/emails and we are working hard to fix this problem.

Update on SV0 / SoHost Issues 27/02/2014 – 13:57

Update on SV0 / SoHost Issues 27/02/2014 – 13:57

SV0/soHost is now back online in our new Cloud Data Center and we are updating DNS for all the websites and domains hosted on this platform, however this can take a few hours to fully replicate, so for some customers email and websites will already now be working, for others this may still take a few hours.

We will update this message as soon as we have further information.

Update on SV0 / SoHost Issues 27/02/2014 – 10:27

Update on SV0 / SoHost Issues 27/02/2014 – 10:27

A further update on this, the servers are re-built and operational in our new data centre, and we are now working on bringing systems back online and assigning the new IP Address range. Once this is done we will bring the soHost / SV0 cluster up one server at a time, ensure load is stable and then open up all services to customers. We anticipate to have the full system online by this afternoon.

Once again we apologise for the extended outage.

Update on SV0 / SoHost Issues 26/02/2014 – 23:44

Update on SV0 / SoHost Issues 26/02/2014 – 23:44

All, a further update on this, we have made significant progress tonight and most parts of our system are now online, we are now rebuilding the email and website hosting parts of our system, although a large proportion of websites are now online, we anticipate full system access in our new data centre to be fully online by Thursday (27/02/2014) PM.

We will provide a further update as soon as we have further information.

Update on SV0 / SoHost Issues - 20:00 - 26/02/2014

Update on SV0 / SoHost Issues - 20:00 - 26/02/2014

All, we wish to advise that our engineers our now rebuilding the final part of the SV0 Web Hosting and Email Platform, following remedial works carried out earlier today. We anticipate the bring the full system up mid afternoon tomorrow, however some websites will now be online.

Once again we apologise for any inconvenience caused during this extended outage.

Many Thanks

soVision Support Team

Update on SV0 / SoHost Issues

Dear Customer, we are pleased to inform you that we have managed to recover and bring up websites on part of our system. We are currently working on the other sites / and email mailbox’s and there is still an issue with this part of the system. We will update this message as soon as we have further information.

soHost / SV0 Planned Downtime for Monday and Tuesday 24th/25th February - UPDATE

Dear Customer, we are currently aware of an extended outage on our SoHost/SV0 platform, if you are contacting us in relation to a website or email issue that is currently hosted on the SV0/soHost platform, we apologise for any delay and are working to resolve the issue as soon as possible.

We will update this message as soon as we have further information along with our website @ www.sovision.com.

Once again we apologise for the extended outage.

soHost / SV0 Planned Downtime for Monday and Tuesday 24th/25th February

Dear Customer.

We have already migrated a large majority of this platform to our new Data Centre which is detailed further below, but we now need to complete the final phase of this work.

Therefore please be advised that on Monday and Tuesday of next week (24th/25th February) various parts of the system will be unavailable to users whilst we complete this migration work.

If you have websites hosted on SV0 / soHost:

• These will appear as ‘offline’ for periods during the upgrade, when users visit your website(s) they will receive a website unavailable (404) error.

If you have emails hosted on SV0 / soHost:

• Emails will queue into your hosted mailbox on our mail gateways (Mailsort), you will receive these when the upgrade has completed. Emails you send from your client PC, Laptop, Tablet or Smartphone will stay on these devices and be sent once the upgrade has completed.

 

If you use SV0 / soHost as a mail relay:

• Emails will stay on your system and not be sent until the system upgrade has been completed. Please note if your mail relay starts with mailsort. This service has already been upgraded and will not be affected.

 

Once again we thank you for your patience during this upgrade, which is essential to maintain the services we offer you. We will update all users once the upgrade has fully completed.

Many Thanks,

From the soVision Support Team

Do you know if your organisation is leaking data? If not here is how you find out.

The Problem:

Most organisations in the UK over the last view years have taken a fairly relaxed approach to consumer-grade sync solutions. Consumer grade sync solutions like Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, Skydrive and iCloud to name the top ones.

Unfortunately a lot of IT support companies are only just ‘switching on’ to the fact that this is a huge risk and actually a security breach on your business… here’s why.

If a user using Dropbox or Google Drive, etc. on their work machine and is then syncing their files to their iPhone, tablet or laptop, it doesn’t take more than this to seriously put your company data in a vulnerable state.

Consider this, small common mishaps happen, such as an employee losing their iPhone for example, there is no lock enabled (which is very common), the password on Dropbox is saved (again very common). If picked up by someone else other than the relative employee at your company would potentially put large amounts and often critical pieces of corporate data in a compromised state. 

Another example, Employee departures, voluntary or not again put your data at risk if these consumer-grade sync solutions are being used. There are loads of stories of organisations who have sacked an employee and seized their devices only to find out that user was syncing their entire work folder to a home PC with Dropbox or the like. This poses a massive problem as sacked employees don’t often return phone calls or emails, etc. And taking legal action to reclaim your compromised data is expensive. 

What can you do?

Begin to weed out data leakage risk. This can be done in conjunction with your local IT services company or managed services provider or if you have internal IT staff they can begin to take measures to do this. 

What we recommend?

We don’t recommend taking a hard-core ‘lock down’ methodology as this often creates an unwanted culture in the office place. What you can do is start by weeding out the most risky applications and data leakage risks. If you block such applications like Dropbox, Google Drive, Box and Skydrive at the firewall users will not return to using them. 

Application management at the network level, like access controls and content filtering, should be a standard component in any managed security offering by your IT services provider. 

Once these dangerous consumer-grade sync solutions are blocked at the firewall than you can begin to replace them with business-grade sync solutions that have the additional security and control features you must have. 

 

Thanks

The soFileIT Team

Increased availability, redundancy and security for soVision customers

soVision will shortly be upgrading and moving our SoHost (Vision Hosting, POP3 and IMAP Email) and Mailsort (Email Filtering System) infrastructure to increase the availability, redundancy and security of our services to you. soVision have recently invested heavily in a large brand new Datacentre Environment to help us meet the ever expanding needs and demands of our customers growth.

The resulting investment means that moving forward we will are able to offer:

 

99.99% uptime on all our hosted cloud based services.

 

A faster and more resilient connection to your data.

 

Enterprise grade Servers and Cisco networking hardware based in sophisticated climate controlled UK based datacentres with military grade security and data encryption.

 

Increased system capacity for Data Processing and Storage.

 

24x7x365 intelligent monitoring with “self-healing” functionality.

 

2 year server hardware refresh programme (Yes, you will have a brand new server to run your services every two years & no downtime whilst they are replaced within our new Datacentre!)

 

 

Our secure datacentres also include:

 

Fully Automated Fire suppression system and independent UPS Battery backups.

 

Onsite generators and transforms independent of mains electricity supplies,

further mitigating the risk of downtime.

 

24x7x365 onsite security team covering all entrances and exits.

 

Role-based employee key card access control.

 

No Photographic or video recording equipment is permitted within the Datacentre.

 

 

Whilst the migration to the new Datacentre take place, there may be some temporary disruption to services whilst they transitioned into the new Datacentre Environment. The possibility of system downtime is regrettable but also unavoidable whilst your data is in transition between too the new datacentres.

 

Any service disruption during the transition will of course be keep to an absolute minimum and secondary communication will be sent to you shortly outlining the time frame in which systems maybe be unavailable and experience disruption.

 

If you should have any queries on this matter, please do not hesitate to contact the professional solutions team who will be happy to answer any of your questions.

 

 

We will keep you updated on the progress of this work at regular intervals.

 

Thanks from the soVision Team

 

 

Update On Cloud Outtage

All,

Services are now restored and we are working with our data center partner to identify a root cause analysis for this issue, we will update you again in due course.

Apologies again for the outage this morning.

Kind Regards,

soVision Support Team