Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup/Recovery

Punch drunk Fasthosts customers are set to be hit with a third compulsory password reset next week, as the budget web hosting company scrambles to cope with a major security breach.

The latest system-wide wipe will affect people who run dedicated servers, have bought backup storage at the firm's Gloucester data centre, and who use "peripheral services" such as its SiteBuilder and traffic analytics. Vulnerable customers were told yesterday via email that if they do not change their own passwords by 19 December, they will be automatically replaced.

In a statement to The Register, Fasthosts promised that this will be the last disruption triggered by the hack attack we reported in October.

It wrote: "This is the third and final stage of our security audit. Fasthosts is fully confident that, in completing all remaining password changes, this will prevent any future disruption or concern."

The first poorly-communicated reset and subsequent delays in getting new passwords to customers had the UK webmaster community in fits of rage in our comments section.

Many websites were shut down and small businesses have been put in jeopardy by Fasthosts' actions. It has limited its reparations to apologising for the "inconvenience".

Tales of Fasthosts' blundering were eventually picked up by papers and the BBC, and the firm now has a mountain to climb to restore any hint of a reputation for competence.

This latest round of unilateral resets confirms that Fasthosts suspects every single customer password was compromised by the hackers. Fears that the attackers plundered some "master database" that also contained banking data have not been assuaged by Fasthosts' public statments.

We reported back in October that Fasthosts was working with credit card companies over the breach.

Fasthosts has refused to comment on what data was stolen, saying it would prejudice the criminal investigation being carried out by the high tech crime squad.

Incidents like this, together with the recent focus on government data incompetence, can only add to the clamour for a disclosure law. Several US jurisdictions have enacted legislation that compels companies to tell people when they have lost their information, and what that information is.

Here in the UK, we have the toothless Information Commissioner's Office. ®

Agentless Backup is Not a Myth