Archives for April 2014

By now you may have read about an extremely widespread issue affecting nearly every SSL (encrypted) site on the planet. This bug has affected most financial institutions, Google, Yahoo, Amazon, etc (the list goes on).
CNN Heartbleed Coverage and more coverage
Official Heartbleed Website
VISP.NET engineers monitor security lists to keep informed of any threats to the industry and the moment this vulnerability was made public our engineers immediately went to work to verify the integrity of our websites and your data. We are pleased to inform you that even though this bug is wide-spread, our engineers have confirmed the bug is not present within most VISP systems and your sensitive data is safe.  The few systems that had affected versions of openssl were immediately patched by our engineers on day zero to mitigate any possible threats.  VISP takes extraordinary measures to protect your data.  In addition to SSL encryption, VISP deploys a secondary level of encryption which was not affected by this bug to safeguard your most sensitive data.
Following the advice of many industry professionals, we would recommend to use caution when entering any private information (including usernames and passwords) on any websites that have not already confirmed that they have patched their system to prevent this vulnerability or were not affected. For any websites which were affected, it would be wise to change your password for those services. It’s always a terrific idea to use a different password for each online service you utilize.
For more information, here is an excellent article at CNET giving advice on how to protect yourself from this bug.  It provides good information you may wish to pass along to your subscribers.
Mcafee has a very simple online test HERE to see if a website is currently vulnerable to the heartbleed bug.  This site gives a simple yes or no answer which is ideal for subscribers who are interested.