JackB
Khoros Alumni (Retired)
Joined 7 years ago
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Marketing Platform Incident: An update on where we are and where we are headed
Thank you to those of you who were able to join us today for the Town Hall we hosted for our Khoros Marketing customers. For those who missed it, I’d like to take a moment here to provide more color on the recent security incident, the decisions we made along the way, and how it informs the future. Before we get into specifics, I want to share a couple key Khoros tenets that shaped our actions: Our customers’ security and success is our TOP priority. Every action we’ve taken was in service of making sure our customers stay secure. Earning our customers’ trust, each and every day, is a core value at Khoros. We hold that trust sacred. We are absolutely committed to transparency. We worked hard to share what we could as soon as we were able. We know we have room for improvement here, and rest assured -- we will take our learnings to heart. Still, given the nature of the threat, please know that there were times when our silence as intentional as we worked relentlessly behind the scenes to contain the bad actor; communicating broadly could have exacerbated the activity. Once we had executed against our security protocols to protect all of you, we felt it was safe to start communicating broadly - and we have. What happened? On Monday, January 27, we helped a customer recover from a malicious attack on their social properties. On Tuesday, we became a target ourselves. We moved quickly upon identifying the intrusion and shut down access to the platform. We identified the issue -- a malicious actor had exploited a vulnerability in the password reset code -- and then set about executing a series of extensive security protocols to ensure the threat was thoroughly contained. We realize this was a major inconvenience for you, but when we weighed the inconvenience against the scale of the threat to your brand, we put your security first. Where do we stand now? The Khoros Marketing platform, including Social Marketing, Intelligence, Experiences, Vault, and Promotions products are back online. The malicious actor accessed a very small number of accounts; the vast majority of our customers’ accounts were untouched. No passwords or PII were compromised in this attack. The incident brought to light several opportunities to improve the security of our platform, and we have already rolled out changes to address many of them, including: We improved the password complexity and duration requirements in our systems. We performed extensive user list audits, and suspended login credentials that were not from a known, branded domain. We have worked with customers with suspended accounts to restore appropriate access. We delivered mandatory multi-factor authentication (MFA) across the Khoros Marketing solution. We have engaged a third-party to complete a penetration test of the entire Marketing platform, ensuring we have contained the threat. (Please know that we have conducted regular third-party pentests of our platform over the years, as many of you are aware.) What’s next? We are determined to use this incident to accelerate security and governance features as well as development of best practices -- which we can deliver to all of you. We invite you to join us on February 19th for a webinar dedicated to the Khoros Marketing product roadmap, where you’ll learn more about these enhancements as well as other exciting investments. Please register here. We will continue to communicate with you through email, Atlas (where you can find the latest news on the Marketing blog), your Customer Success Managers, and through in-platform messaging to help you return to business as usual. Finally, we are well aware that our decision to temporarily shut down Khoros Marketing disrupted your normal flow of business, and we are committed to making that right. All Khoros Marketing customers will receive compensation for your downtime, which we will credit to your account and deduct from a future invoice. Living our values Every company has values, the principles that guide their behavior, regardless of circumstance. Khoros’ values are: We listen, learn, and lead to help our customers succeed We win and grow as one team We earn trust through our actions and attitudes This incident was a chance for Khoros to put our values into action, and while we hated to disrupt your day-to-day, I am proud of the work we did to keep you and your brands safe. My ongoing commitment is that we will continue to earn your trust and business through our actions, every day. Thank you for being our customer.207ViewsSign in to react to this post1CommentOutage update: Khoros Marketing Platform (7th Feb 10:20pm CST)
All, As you know, we shut down access to the Khoros Marketing platform earlier this evening at the first sign of a malicious attack by a third party. We have identified the catalyst of the incident: a phishing attack allowed the attacker to infiltrate our platform. At this point, it appears the attack was limited to two customers and those customers have been notified. We took down the system immediately to protect all of our customers while we identified the source of the attack. At this point, it appears that no other customers were impacted by this incident. We are working to bring the system back up safely and quickly. Thank you for your continued patience. We are committed to protecting our customers and we are disappointed to be the cause of further disruption to your business.ViewsSign in to react to this postCommentsMarketing Platform Update as of 1.29.20 10:07 PM CST
All, It’s Wednesday night and, as we’ve announced on the status.khoros.com page, we are delaying the expected go live of the Khoros Marketing platform until tomorrow morning. We are keenly aware of the magnitude of this disruption to you and continue to work around the clock to restore you and your teams. At the same time, we cannot take shortcuts when it comes to your security -- in that, we are holding ourselves to the highest standards. I cannot say it more plainly: the severity of our action matched the severity of the threat. Our team has been working around the clock to complete comprehensive security protocols that we believe will put us in a position to keep you and your brand’s integrity safe. As of this evening, we have the site up internally and are testing exhaustively across our Engineering and Product teams. In parallel, our Support and Customer Success teams are documenting the workflows to get you back up and running successfully and securely tomorrow. As painful as this incident has been, it is critical that we get this right. As I said in my last note, we take very seriously the trust you have placed in us, and as we are committed to a thoughtful and thorough resolution. We will continue to share material information with you as we have it on status.khoros.com and on Atlas. Please look for an update tomorrow by 9:00 am CST on status.khoros.com with a more specific window on your service restoration. Thank you. JackViewsSign in to react to this postCommentLatest Update on Khoros Marketing Platform
As part of my commitment to you as a Khoros customer, I want to directly inform you that late this afternoon, Khoros identified an issue in our Marketing platform. Out of an abundance of caution and to protect customers, we are following the appropriate protocols and diligently working to bring customers back online within the next 24 hours. You have my assurance that since we were first made aware of the issue, it has been our number one priority as a company and it will remain so until all customers are back online. At Khoros, we take pride in our honesty, integrity and the reliability of our services and solutions and we are committed to a thoughtful and thorough resolution. We are honored to have you as our customer and we do not take for granted that your trust comes with the expectation that we will continue to put your success first every day. We will continue to share material information with you as we have it on status.khoros.com and on Atlas. Thank you. Jack Jack Blaha Chief Executive OfficerViewsSign in to react to this postCommentsWednesday Update #1 - Marketing Platform
As you know, we shut down access to the Khoros Marketing platform yesterday afternoon due to suspicious activity. For context, we helped a customer recover from a malicious social attack on Monday, which made us hyper-vigilant. On Tuesday, we became the target ourselves. We took swift and decisive action upon identifying the intrusion, taking the unprecedented step of shutting down access to the platform. This was a difficult decision - we know that you depend on our platform - but we made the choice to err on the side of security. With the platform locked down, we conducted a thorough root cause analysis and we confirmed that an unauthorized third party exploited a vulnerability in our platform’s password reset code. The issue has been resolved. The issue directly impacted a small number of customers, and those who were affected have been contacted. For all other customers, your accounts were not impacted. We have worked through the night to complete our security protocols and continue to believe we will have your access restored by 10pm Central. Thank you for your continued patience. We will continue to share material information with you as we have it on status.khoros.com and here, on Atlas. Jack Jack Blaha Chief Executive OfficerViewsSign in to react to this postComments- ViewsSign in to react to this postComments
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