Parasol Umbrella seem to have disappeared today

[gizzmo]

A week on and the Parasol portal is still down.

[eek]

A week on and the Parasol portal is still down.

Hardly surprising - given that people have been on the server / network everything needs to be completely rebuilt from scratch (think I'm joking its quicker than checking what might have been changed / tampered with).

[courtg9000]

Hardly surprising - given that people have been on the server / network everything needs to be completely rebuilt from scratch (think I'm joking its quicker than checking what might have been changed / tampered with).

you forgot to mention the Cloudfare subscription!

[saptastic]

Why would SJD be down as well? I know part of the same group - guess it is all linked together "system" or they took everything down as a precautionary measure?

[eek]

Why would SJD be down as well? I know part of the same group - guess it is all linked together "system" or they took everything down as a precautionary measure?

If someone has got into your network you take EVERYTHING down.

[pacontracting]

Still not been paid yet - agency paid Parasol on Thursday. Does anyone know anyone who has actually got any money paid to them yet?

[courtg9000]

Why would SJD be down as well? I know part of the same group - guess it is all linked together "system" or they took everything down as a precautionary measure?

The whole of the group will be either a) completely down or b) cut down operation until further notice most likely. Ie they have found the issue and fixed it and made sure it cannot happen again. This may include a redesign/reimplementation of certain systems.
I heard a suggestion on here that the IP phone network may be on the VLAN as everything else. They may take the opportunity to solve this while they are at it.
I guess there might be some work available for some Windows Server patching experts too!!!!

[gruntling]

Still not been paid yet - agency paid Parasol on Thursday. Does anyone know anyone who has actually got any money paid to them yet?

I was paid about half what I was owned for last month over the weekend.

Of course I can't invoice for last week with the system down!

[I am tired TIRED]

I was paid about half what I was owned for last month over the weekend.

Of course I can't invoice for last week with the system down!

Hopefully the madness is coming to an end but won't hold my breath!

This was sent by Parasol in the last hour:

Dear XXXXX Further to our previous communication, you'll be aware that we recently suffered a cyber security incident that impacted some of our key systems and caused significant disruption to our services. As soon as we identified the issue, we immediately took action to mitigate its impact with the support of external IT security specialists and are working round the clock to minimise disruption to our services and resume normal operations.

What about my personal information? While we are still in the early stages of our investigations, based on our current understanding of the incident there is no evidence that personal data has been removed from our system. We will provide an update on our investigation when we have more information to share, but we have been informed by our external advisors that this could take a number of weeks.

Getting paid Following the work conducted over the weekend, I’m pleased to advise you that we will shortly be starting a transition towards a more normal approach. As you will know if you have been due pay in the last six days, we have been unable to access our systems to gather timesheet information or to allow us to run a normal payroll. As a result, and to ensure that we can get pay to you at the earliest opportunity, we have been making a payment in lieu of that normal payroll amount, which we call an advance payment. This doesn’t imply that the amount is prior to payment being due and for clarity, it is instead of the pay you were due to receive. As of today, this will continue however, we anticipate being able to advise you that we are moving to a full payroll service in the next 48 hours. Once our payroll service is fully resumed, we will make an adjustment for any difference in pay advanced to that which would have been paid normally. This will incorporate any deductions which should have been applied.

Getting in touch In the meantime, remember you have the following ways in which you can contact us: You can connect with us via LiveChat between the hours of 8am and 7pm Monday to Friday using this link: https://parasolgroup.co.uk/portal-maintenance. You can email us as normal at [email protected]. We will respond to you as quickly as possible. You can call us on 01925 644860 between 9am and 5.30pm Monday to Friday although we would recommend that you contact us through LiveChat due to the volume of calls we are currently receiving. We will continue to update you regularly about the progress we are making to restore our systems. Thank you for your continued understanding at this time. Kind regards Doug Crawford, CEO Parasol

[agentzero]

Highly likely not to be financial. They were bought out by a big venture capital group a while back and every company in the group seems to have issues. Parasol, SJD, Nixon Williams are all having issues.

My money is that they have been hit by ransomeware or similar.

Couldn't happen to a nicer group of companies. Nixon Williams absolutely tanked in service a few years ago, as did SJD. They deserve to go bust, to be quite frank. Let's hope that the fall out from this hack will be so wide that the companies finally get buried. I have sympathy for the staff, but in a way if they tolerate working there when all the long term staff ran out the door, then it's difficult to find sympathy for the business as a whole.

https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/...roup_confirms/

Speaking to industry Security contacts, it looks to be quite a bad case of ransomware and a lack of solid backup procedures. I don't see the list of companies coming back online any time soon. Their companies are also burdened with such huge debts that they won't be getting good terms for borrowing to get new cloud instances created by their IT persons, keeping in mind that they outsource their IT to a small local outfit near Manchester.

Do you trust them now with your data and financials? No, me neither. I hope this is the nail in the coffin.