Having lived through a cyber-attack in a large organization myself – I am pleasantly surprised to see that Wolters Kluwer Legal and Regulatory has made such speedy progress getting their products back online in less than a week. Cheetah their main legal and regulatory platform was back online this morning after 3 days offline. Tomorrow RBSource, RBSource Filings and M&A Clause Analytics which are specialty products for corporate and securities lawyers will be back up tomorrow. Not every feature is working in these products. But they have created a useful chart where customers can check the status of each feature.
Can we all just be patient? I understand that some customers are chomping at the bit to find out how the Wolters Kluwer executives plan to “make them whole” in response to the service interruption. My advice to subscribers is to hold off on the certified mail demand letter. Again, having been through a cyber attack myself I understand that the immediate focus is on getting the business back up and running. My own experience makes me suspect that the IT and Security teams have been working around the clock – there are likely some very tired executives hunkered down in a conference room with a temporary communication system ( personal cell phones and personal email accounts) reassembling the pieces of a complex organization.
We need to give them a few weeks to regroup and develop a response. Their focus is rightly on getting the business up and running – there will be time for the “make me whole” discussion — we just need to be patient.
They have added a separate chart for RBSource features at the bottom of the Cheetah page.
