Parasol Umbrella seem to have disappeared today

[agentzero]

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?

Article has been updated:
https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/...omware_attack/

These companies are being drained by a venture capitalist business. Security wasn't at the front of the queue when their cloud services were provisioned. They have kept the company data within one portal within their cloud instance. Looks to be the end of these businesses.

There are plenty of reviews for other providers here. People need to insist to their agencies that the relationship with Parasol Group companies is over, kickbacks or no kickbacks.

[WTFH]

These companies are being drained by a venture capitalist business...

Umm...

...Dominic Dalli...

[agentzero]

Umm...

Is my understanding incorrect? I thought a VC group bought out all the companies. The debt ratio and EBITDA suggest that this remains the case, despite there being a CEO of parasol. The funders and backers are a VC group.

[WTFH]

Is my understanding incorrect? I thought a VC group bought out all the companies. The debt ratio and EBITDA suggest that this remains the case, despite there being a CEO of parasol. The funders and backers are a VC group.

Follow the chain up and you get to:
https://www.sovereigncapital.co.uk/w...dominic-dalli/

[Andy Hallett]

Any rebates an agency receives is insignificant compared to the issue of its contractors not getting paid.

[agentzero]

Any rebates an agency receives is insignificant compared to the issue of its contractors not getting paid.

At the time of the issue, yes, otherwise no. Backhanders and kickbacks exist because the majority of umbrella companies and contractor accounting companies aren't very good at their jobs. They deserve bad press. A consolidation of the industry was expected at some point after recent IR35 changes and this appears to be emerging as the time when these happenings occur. I look forward to Parasol and their various companies going bust, along with the VC firm losing a lot of money.

Any agency, umbrella co, or contractor accounting company that allows service to get so bad that they can't even provide a consistent service deserves to enter the abyss.

[courtg9000]

Is my understanding incorrect? I thought a VC group bought out all the companies. The debt ratio and EBITDA suggest that this remains the case, despite there being a CEO of parasol. The funders and backers are a VC group.

More of a Private Equity group than a VC group the two can be both the same and different. The main difference is a VC outfit has more hard cash to play with instead of playing with debt to make profit. I have seen PE backed firms with much worse Debt and EBITBA happily trading away without a care in the world and I am talking much higher profile than this lot.

Any company in such a structure will have a CEO. The CEO of the PE group will define the rules by which the CEO of the owned company will play and his minions will join the board to ensure that the company's management play to the tune directed by the top CEO.

Knowing what I do about private equity***. I am not too concerned about these companies today. Just today and maybe tomorrow the 19th mind. However, I suspect a huge chunk of their customer base of the entire group will vote with their feet and switch provider after this attack. This is where contractors could really get hurt. It is quite possible that losses will mount and then contractors might not get paid.

I suspect that we will hear of a restructuring of the group this year and I would suggest that this includes debt and layoffs. Also a sale of the group or parts would not surprise me.

The joke here is that most of their clients are IT guys. I have only heard a rumour about 1 flaky windows server but a quick chat with some of their clients might have told them a few stark home truths and this could have all been avoided for a few quid! This thread has posted up at least one other howler regarding VLANS's and I wonder how many others could be told.

Hint to Lucy at clarity - get your marketing game on full power, lots of open customers probably waiting for you to charm them into placing business with you very soon.

***I was in private equity for a while backed by my own money - much smaller deals.

[pacontracting]

Hint to Lucy at clarity - get your marketing game on full power, lots of open customers probably waiting for you to charm them into placing business with you very soon.

***I was in private equity for a while backed by my own money - much smaller deals.

Clarity appears to be using 'justaccounts.com' as their portal. This looks like an AWS hosted environment located in the Dublin AWS region (by the registered IP addresses). People will be looking around and certainly security will be a number one talking point. Do justaccounts.com have a security statement?

There is a risk that some of the smaller Umbrella's could be inundated with customers but at least in theory, the AWS platform could be scaled fairly quickly.

I hope those Umbrellas' that actually do care, do take advantage of this debacle.

[courtg9000]

Clarity appears to be using 'justaccounts.com' as their portal. This looks like an AWS hosted environment located in the Dublin AWS region (by the registered IP addresses). People will be looking around and certainly security will be a number one talking point. Do justaccounts.com have a security statement?

There is a risk that some of the smaller Umbrella's could be inundated with customers but at least in theory, the AWS platform could be scaled fairly quickly.

I hope those Umbrellas' that actually do care, do take advantage of this debacle.

I'm no longer "in the game" but I do know how scalable AWS is. Lucy does have a very good reputation in this town.

[eek]

Clarity appears to be using 'justaccounts.com' as their portal. This looks like an AWS hosted environment located in the Dublin AWS region (by the registered IP addresses). People will be looking around and certainly security will be a number one talking point. Do justaccounts.com have a security statement?

There is a risk that some of the smaller Umbrella's could be inundated with customers but at least in theory, the AWS platform could be scaled fairly quickly.

I hope those Umbrellas' that actually do care, do take advantage of this debacle.

No firm is going to provide a full security statement it would give too much information away that could be used against them.

However the advantage of all the third party providers (Flexr, Octopaye, Just Accounts, My Digital) is that they are independent of the umbrella and because they are software houses first they understand security in a way that the older umbrellas with custom software haven't until now cared about.