The Lowdown on our Latest Security Upgrade

We recently reached out to all of our clients to inform them of some upcoming security improvements that we are distributing to the majority of our products, and you may be wondering what it all really means.

We want our users to understand why we are making these changes and help you to reap the benefits of our improved security measures.

Our number one priority is to ensure that every product we provide our users with is as safe and secure as possible. We have a number of requirements and promises, largely based on our business ethics that we need to firmly stand by as a company, at the same time we are conscious of our users and how this may impact you and so we endeavour to provide as much support and advice as possible during this transition period.

After May 2016, we will be turning off old and unsafe encryption methods to ensure that our services are up to date according to official guidelines and regulations that PPS and many other professional services are governed by. Following this change, many of our PPS products will be incompatible with a variety of out of date operating systems such as Windows XP and Vista.

To put things into perspective, other services which will be complying to or working towards the same changes include online banking, many online shopping sites such as PayPal, eBay, as well as Apple and social media websites such as Facebook.

The official guidelines that we adhere to include the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) alongside industry standards set by OWASP as well as the definitions set by our 3rd party penetration testing teams.

The reality of the situation is that the risk that we are taking steps to avoid spans far wider than just your PPS solutions. Anyone that runs our products on an older unsupported platform is putting more than just their PPS data at risk. Everything you manage on an out of date operating system is at risk of theft, destruction and ransom. Nobody should run around panicking after reading that last bit as it not said in a way to scaremonger – the internet and the cloud is an incredible thing when used correctly, but it is our responsibility and the responsibility of other technical companies, to inform clients that using old operating systems is a very common gateway for cyber criminals to put your business at risk.

We would like to stress the importance of checking and updating all of your devices where necessary and have put together a central resource of information to make sure all of our clients are fully aware of which services will be impacted and how to move forward to ensure that your data is safe.

TLS Security Update Information.

The world of data security is a hot topic and that will only become more apparent over time. As attacks become more diverse and sophisticated, so does the need to keep our external and internal systems one step ahead wherever possible. A big part of staying secure from the user’s perspective is to stay as up to date as possible with operating systems and their associated security updates.
We know this will affect a small number of our users and so our team are fully equipped with the knowledge they will need to give you the right support and advice if needed.
Ultimately, we’re committing ourselves to data security above everything else in order to keep YOUR data safe.