Reply from iNSYNQAug 3, 2019
Andrew,
A few comments here.
1) I really appreciate the generous comments / acknowledgement regarding the support and customer success teams. And I know they've been hard to get a hold of, but I really appreciate your kind words as to how they are to work with once you finally do. And obviously I appreciate your acknowledgement of me doing everything I can from a spokesperson standpoint. I've also had a lot of help from the rest of the team, including the whole leadership team. Those not in the trenches on the technical side have been just as deep if not more so on the communications side.
2) I'm (deeply) surprised to hear that your desktop isn't up and you haven't received communications. I'll try to reach out to you directly immediately after sending this to look into why that would be because you certainly should be able to log in to your desktop, and at this point all (or at least the majority) of your apps should be working. I'm also surprised to hear that you haven't received any comms. So I'd like to look into that directly.
3) You're absolutely right. The buck stops with me. I'm the CEO and there's responsibility that comes with that regardless of the nature or side commentary of the cause (valid or not). Plain and simple.
4) As you've read in some of my other responses to people and our communications overall, as tempting as it is to do so anyway, there's a lot in terms of specifics relating to our situation and our cyber security architecture that we/I can't go into. We definitely did have defense mechanisms in place that were at least up to par with industry standard. Unfortunately, no one is safe from these kinds of attacks in the modern era. While most people know that this trend is true, what many don't appreciate until they endure it most directly is that every organization, and every single individual person has exposure to these attacks. The sophistication of the attacks varies. And in the case of ransomware, the amount of ransom demanded varies (with some correlation to an assessment by the criminal actors' estimate as to what can be afforded). Unfortunately in our case we were hit by a very targeted, brand new, customized attack. I don't raise this point as an excuse, but rather to emphasize that I think it's important that all iNSYNQ customers (anyone reading this for that matter), really needs to appreciate that these risks are radically more pronounced than they were even just one year ago. So just be careful. Unfortunately, no one is safe from these, unless they pay for everything in cash and don't use the internet at all. For us, the one silver lining that I point to with total conviction is that, you cannot fully appreciate: A) the importance; and, B) the best way to, prepare for these things until you've been through one. You, and so many of our other customers can now attest to part A as you've experienced this with us. Part B is relevant to the future of doing business with iNSYNQ. You can do all the audits and all the investing you want, but going through an attack like this is the only real way to prepare yourself as a technology company - both in terms of avoiding it ever happening again, and in the unlikely case that it does, preparing yourself to respond.
5) I understand why you're planning to leave us. Obviously that kills me to hear (and that's a wild understatement) but I understand where you're coming from.
My only hope is that you're open to hearing us out in the coming week or so. We've got a lot we'll be offering to those that stick with us in terms of information on steps we're taking, additional add-on products / services we will be paying for to arm you for this kind of thing in the future, and doing everything we can to make our customers whole on the economics side of things.
Regards,
Elliot
