One more step towards restoration of connectivity
Last week has been devoted to the password rotation, mostly for users in the BENELUX-FR area. Good progress has been made, even if the expected behaviour of some devices has proved sporadically… unexpected. Throughout this process, users have showed a lot of patience, understanding and resourcefulness. Thank you for this!
As explained earlier, now that this password rotation is almost coming to an end, the following days will be devoted to an additional screening of all laptops. Devices will be inspected once again and specific security files locally upgraded – let’s call this our vaccination drive. For 90% of the users, this will be done remotely, in a transparent way: i.e., you won’t notice anything and you will be able to keep working.
For an identified group of some 120 users, a physical intervention – potentially a swap of device – will be planed. These users will be contacted in advance.
Once password rotation is done and machines scanned again for security, connectivity will be gradually re-allowed. This means that we will ‘open’ the gates again toward the external world, databases, systems, programs, etc. Sometimes this restored connectivity will not yet solve all issues as a number of our programs are still affected and need rebuilding. Nevertheless, we expect this connectivity restoration will positively affect users’ productivity.
At some point during connectivity restoration, users will be asked to change their password again, this time with a personal one. This triple password rotation will strengthen our access strategy and makes us stronger to resist external threat.
Additional note for colleagues who are not yet migrated to 0365 and who are working on the webmail version of Outlook: as from this week, the ICT team will start restoring the email databases. Concretely this means that users will see their emails dating from prior the incident, being gradually restored and ‘flowing in’ their webmail inbox. This gradual restoration process will take max. 2 weeks.
While all this is taking places, business continues. Project sites are running, clients are served, designs are made, tenders are answered, contracts are signed. A strong thank you to all affected colleagues for their resourcefulness and efficiency in adverse circumstances!