Premier One Among Tech Firms Assisting Recovery Effort After Ransomware Attack
Topeka-based IT and web services provider Premier One is part of a team of businesses assisting title insurance agents in the wake of a massive ransomware attack. The attack has rendered inaccessible the systems of a large cloud service provider that serves a significant number of title agencies, which could disrupt operations for those agencies.
According to an article on the American Land Title Association’s website, Cloudstar, one of the title industry’s largest cloud-hosting providers with over 42,000 users, had its systems rendered inaccessible by a sophisticated ransomware attack this weekend. The attack has denied title agencies using Cloudstar the ability to access cloud-based data. That data could be necessary to process title insurance orders and even real estate closings. At the time of this writing, it was reported that Cloudstar was still unable to access its systems.
Premier One joins other technology-focused firms from title industry, including SofPro, RamQuest and Qualia, offering assistance to title agencies unable to process insurance orders because of the attack.
According to Shawn Fox, director of sales and marketing for Premier One, “Unfortunately, these companies do not have any of their data since the backups were affected in this attack as well,” Fox said. “We are setting them up with a blank database of the production software to get them operational for (Monday). As of right now, if a title company has not made any plans and are just hoping that Cloudstar comes back, they will not be able to process any orders. A lot of the customers also had their emails hosted with Cloudstar so they are also having a hard time with communication.” (Source: American Land Title Association).
Kevin Nincehelser, Chief Operating Officer for Premier One, said they are telling title companies affected by the attack to verify their security status and ensure there is not an active threat to IT assets. “Title companies should restore their ability to process new orders. This can be accomplished by obtaining a new instance of their production software on-premises or hosted with an available vendor such as Premier One, OP2, SoftPro, or Qualia. Companies also must rebuild production processes and workflows. For many agents, the extensive customization to their production software will be lost. It’s best to begin rebuilding as soon as possible.”
No timeline has been reported regarding when Cloudstar may again have access to its systems.
About Premier One
Topeka, Kansas-based Premier One is an IT consulting and cloud services provider serving small to mid-sized companies in the title insurance, banking, and professional services industries. Premier One has been serving clients throughout the country since 1991.
