Security firm Sophos with dual headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts and Oxford, UK, made a decision to disable its partner portal following a breach that was discovered earlier this week. According to a notice on the portal itself, Sophos doesn’t know if any sensitive data was accessed including passwords and email addresses. Until the investigation in to the breach is concluded, the portal will remain offline.
On Tuesday, Sophos said they detected suspicious activity on the main webserver used to host the partner portal and that further investigation revealed two programs on the server designed to allow remote access. It is unknown what the applications were exactly, but once discovered, the security firm suspended all access to the domain. Information potentially exposed included, partner names and business addresses, contact information, email addresses, and hashed passwords (hash type unknown – Steve).
However, the breached server was older half of the partner program, as those who were migrated to Sophos’ SFDC-based partner portal were not impacted by the security incident.
In the meantime, Sophos has said they cannot confirm if any data was taken during the breach, so they will assume the worst. As a result, all passwords on the site have been reset, and they are conducting a full audit on the system.
“We realize that the site’s downtime and the forced password resets may be an overreaction and are sorry for the disruption this will cause, but we would rather cause some inconvenience at this stage than delay as we wait for further information,” the notice explains.
In addition to the explanation and limited details, Sophos recommends that partners monitor their email accounts for suspicious emails, and ensure that they are using a unique password for the partner program.
The portal is expected to return next week after the holiday.