Good morning,

I am happy to report that we have successfully resolved the Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack, that hit us on Monday & have been 100% stable for over 48 hours.  To better explain what a DDOS attack is, here’s a link that provides a great explanation:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhA9PAfkJ10

We have implemented a major security change that you need to be aware of.  Going forward, Gabbart is a North American (USA, Mexico, and Canada)  web hosting company and have created a Geofence blocking the rest of the world from our network.  ALL other countries cannot access our network, which includes browsing websites, pinging, and DDOS attacks.  If your school district participates in a foreign exchange program or other program where someone in a foreign country needs access to your website, please contact us and we can discuss the country and risks involved.  We do have 100% control of which countries have access to our web servers in the future.

One issue that you do need to be aware of in case it’s reported.  On Monday evening between 5:03pm – 6:10pm, we had implemented a front end caching service to deflect the DDOS’s effects on our servers.  The intensity of the attack caused issues and it begin presenting users with incorrect URL’s.  For example:  I attempted to access ABCSchools.com and was redirected to XYZSchools.com.  We immediately took down this service once it started. (Issue happened during a 20-25 minute window.)  We’ve had a few reports of users still having this issue due to browser caching.  Simply clear your browser cache to resolve this issue.

I fully understand that as you’re preparing your staff for the unknown of this school year, parents for enrollment and school supplies, and students getting familiar with their school & teachers, this was the absolute worst time for your website to have gone down.  I want to sincerely thank all of you who sent emails and text of encouragement, prayer, and stories of your previous experience with DDOS attacks.  You have no idea how much this meant to myself and our team!!!  Many of you have been clients for over 10 years now and know this is a very rare occasion for us to go down.  We are used to supporting you, but in this instance, we felt your support! 

Thank you!!!