by Bruce Staff

Over the last six weeks the Blue Poppy website has been hacked into three times. Until six weeks ago we blissfully went along thinking that all we had to worry about was coming up with ways to offer our customers a better web experience, better products and more information. Then WHAM!! The reality of doing business on the web hit us right in the face.

Many of us have read about the wave of malicious activity that is wreaking havoc on the web. These attacks are originating from Korea, China, Russia and Eastern Europe. Attacks of this form have been an issue on the web for some time now but they had never touched us. Recently, however, the magnitude of the attacks has created a rampant epidemic that is now affecting Blue Poppy.

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We realize that the most important thing in this situation is to be vigilant, to be well protected, to use the latest software and, if all of our defenses don’t work, to have a disaster recovery process and procedure in place so that our site and server can be restored to pre-infection status as quickly as possible. We managed to clean and repair our server after each of these attacks in a matter of hours.

We have spent many hours and dollars over the last several weeks shoring up our defenses, doing security scans, etc. All issues have been cleaned up quickly after each attack and all of your private information has remained secure. Now we have made a policy decision to eliminate all remote access to our server, blocking unknown IP addresses at the firewall. Through extensive research and connecting with other people who have faced these same attacks we have found the backdoor path that has been used to circumvent our security…and we have now slammed that door shut. In addition, we have now purchased a new server defense mechanism which is another layer of protection in our attempt to shield our web site and you, our customer, from these attacks. You can return to our website with confidence, as this software will now lock the server down from any future attack.

As the person in charge of the day-to-day operation of Blue Poppy I want you to know that we are doing everything in our power to keep our website safe. I would like to be able to tell you that it will never happen again but all I can truthfully tell you is that we will do our best to make it as difficult as possible for anyone to be able to hack into our site again. And, if they do we will find the problem as quickly as possible and be up and running as soon as the site is safe enough for us to invite you back.

Our pledge to you has always been that we will be the best site in our industry; providing you with FREE information that will help you treat your patients wisely and effectively and keep you current with the latest happenings in the practice of Chinese medicine. We will now have to work a little bit harder to make you comfortable visiting our site. But, we know we are up to the challenge and I hope you continue to have faith in us.