Customer Success Stories
|
Customer: www.kidney.org Vertical: Healthcare/Non-profit |
Background
Kidney.org is a nonprofit health organization dedicated to preventing kidney and urinary tract diseases, improving the health and well-being of individuals and families affected by kidney disease and increasing the availability of all organs for transplantation. Kidney.org provides vital patient and community services, conduct extensive public and professional education and support kidney research to identify new treatments.
The Kidney.org website has become the central source of information for kidney disease and related conditions. It is utilized for contributions, event registration, merchandise sales and membership sign-ups. The site offers online tools and certification for health care professionals as well as providing website hosting for local offices looking for an online presence.
Challenge
Kidney.org suffered multiple malware attacks during August, 2009. During the month, the Kidney.org site was blacklisted by search engines and web browsers. Anthony Della Camera, Director of Web Services for Kidney.org spoke about the impact of their website being placed on Google's blacklist.
"Our entire site became inaccessible, and patients and doctors were unable to utilize vital information. We saw the number of visitors drop off by 20% for the entire month of August," said Anthony.
The Kidney.com web team spent several hours across multiple days troubleshooting the problem on their website. Their developers had to manually inspect all of the URLs on their site, and remove lines of malicious code from the site source code and SQL tables.
Results
Kidney.org uses Dasient's Malware Monitoring service to address its problems with malware and blacklisting. "Dasient is able to locate specific areas of our site that are infected," said Anthony. Whenever there is a malware problem on kidney.org, "Dasient is very efficient, reducing the amount of clean-up time needed and allowing our site to go back online quickly." Anthony appreciates the regular monitoring provided by the Dasient service. "The weekly emails are a good reminder that Dasient is constantly monitoring the site for us."
Having felt the pain associated with blacklisting and visitor losses, Anthony added, "Hopefully no organization has to deal with this experience, in which we lost hours of productivity. However, if they do, I’m sure they will find Dasient to be a very valuable resource."
|
Customer: www.enlightenliving.com Vertical: E-commerce |
Background
Enlighten Living provides elegant home lighting and ceiling fans, the best of American Classics and European Design including the complete line of Laura Ashley Home Lighting. The organization uses enlightenliving.com website as its online store.
Challenge
Heiko Mitzkus is the President of Enlighten Living. Heiko recounted how his site suffered malware attacks repeatedly during the spring and summer of 2009. "There were numerous occasions when our website was attacked. Before partnering with Dasient, it usually took us 3 to 4 days to resolve our malware problems," Heiko said. The Enlighten Living site was placed on a search engine blacklist after each malware infection, and the impact on its business was significant. "Traffic and sales tanked," Heiko recounted. "On those days on which we were blacklisted, we lost about 80% of our traffic and sales."
"We had repeated issues with having our website infected with malware," Heiko continued. "Prior to using Dasient, by the time we realized we were infected, search engines and browsers would already put us on a blacklist... The biggest pain points were not being able to prevent being blacklisted, and not knowing about the malicious content until it was too late."
Results
Using its Malware Monitoring Service, Dasient informed Enlighten Living as soon as malicious code was discovered on the enlightenliving.com website, before the site was blacklisted. "Having the advanced warning that our site is hosting malicious content helps us resolve the issue before Google blacklists us," said Heiko. "Dasient is a great preventative tool to have, especially if you have or had issues with websites being hacked." Heiko concluded that, "We should have subscribed to the service before the first malware attack!"
|
Customer: www.BrandGames.com Vertical: Professional Services |
Background
BrandGames™ was the first company - in 1995 - to specialize in leveraging computer game technology for business communications. BrandGames combines compelling corporate storytelling and highly immersive simulations to enhance organizational performance and individual development. The BrandGames website is the primary portal and marketing site for BrandGames' services. The website is also the point of entry for clients and external partners who access files and information on active accounts.
Challenge
Andy Rosenbloom, the Marketing Director at BrandGames, discussed the impact of malware attacks on brandgames.com. According to Andy, BrandGames suffered significant damage to its brand and reputation due to a recent malware attack. Client communications containing links to the BrandGames.com site were ineffective, as well as Google Adwords links and other links to the site. Clients and external partners were unable to access files to continue works in progress.
"The most painful part of the experience was finding out from our clients that our site had been infected by malware. There is no way of knowing how long the site had been infected before we found out," Andy said. To that Andy added, "At that point, a ‘mad scramble’ to fix the problem sent our team into a disorganized, frenzied, time-crunch effort to fix the malware errors." Not knowing where to start to look for the problem resulted in many hours spent tracking down malware issues. In the meantime, the site's customers were at risk of getting infected with a virus, and BrandGames was at risk of losing more customers and business.
Results
Dasient helps BrandGames identify malware problems before the site suffers significant customer, brand, and reputation losses. "I receive an email from Dasient every week which gives me the peace of mind to know that our website is secure and that our marketing communications are serving their full effect," Andy said. When malware is detected on the site, Dasient specifies exactly what the problem is, which makes it much easier to identify and remove web-based malware from the site. Andy continued, "This identification also saves BrandGames money and work-hours that would be spent trying to identify what exactly the malware issue is."
Andy expressed that he is incredibly satisfied with Dasient's services. After using Dasient's Web Anti-Malware (WAM) services, Andy recounted how a recent alert helped his team efficiently address a malware attack. "I knew first thing in the morning that our site's security was breached and immediately dedicated resources to fixing the problem. I had the malware removed and the site secured by that afternoon and the BrandGames site never made it onto a blackist."
"The value that I extract from Dasient's monitoring and reporting is invaluable, as the service has kept me from losing the use of my website for crucial marketing and client service functions," Andy said.
|
Customer: www.usabasketball.com Vertical: Sports and Leisure |
Background
USA Basketball is the National Governing Body for basketball in the United States. As such, one of the main things USA Basketball does is field national teams for various international competitions like the Olympics, FIBA World Championships, age-based FIBA World Championships, etc. The organization relies on USABasketball.com to disseminate information on the various national teams that are competing; provides historical information on past USA Basketball teams; provides information on the organization as a whole; acts as a source for media outlets, families and friends interested in various USA Basketball teams, and drives traffic to their online store and social media outlets.
Challenge
USABasketball.com had suffered multiple malware attacks, and had been blacklisted by search engines and browsers. Caroline Williams is the Communications Director for USA Basketball. The key pain points for USABasketball.com from the malware attacks were losses of users and reputation. "The impact of being placed on the Google blacklist caused confusion among some members of the media and fans," Caroline said. "People became suspect when trying to get onto USA Basketball.com."
USA Basketball has a small staff of 12 people and does not have an IT or web department. "After being placed on the blacklist I spent a good chunk of time trying to figure out why we were blacklisted and what was needed to be done to be removed. It was a frustrating process," Caroline said.
Results
By Dasient alerting USA Basketball the moment malicious code has been placed on the server, the USA Basketball team is able to remove the code and problem files quickly, before the site gets blacklisted. According to Caroline, USA Basketball is very satisfied with Dasient's products and services, "because it is one less thing I have to worry about."
"Especially for those organizations that don't have a specific department to deal with this, it's a quick and easy way to get a little peace of mind." In addition to expressing great satisfaction with Dasient products, Caroline added, "Everyone at Dasient has been professional and pleasant to work with. I find the weekly reports to be very helpful and the immediate alerts when something has been found has been a tremendous help as I try to navigate waters with no compass to speak of!"
|
Customer: www.CardioLogix.com Vertical: Manufacturing/High Tech |
Background
Advanced CardioLogix, a 12 year-old company that specializes in low-cost high-tech stress management research & product development. CardioLogix offers Stress Management Software tools that are available from their website in both downloadable and CD formats.
Challenge
Peter Julian is the CEO of Advanced CardioLogix. Peter discussed what happened when his site suffered a malware attack and was blacklisted by browsers and search engines. "We estimate the effect [of the blacklisting] was to cause thousands of visitors to run screaming from our site in the wrong direction," said Peter. In addition to losing customers and traffic due to the blacklisting, Peter also believes that his site suffered lasting brand and reputation damage as well. "I mean, think about it… How many people will ever return to a site branded by Google as 'dangerous?'" Peter added.
Peter's staff was unable to identify the source of the malware infection. "We were basically stuck," he said.
Results
With a report provided by Dasient, the Cardiologix team was able to quickly address the malware infection and resume normal operation of its website. The Malware Monitoring service provided Peter and his team with a detailed diagostic report that pinpointed what parts of the site were compromised, and also identified the malicious code left behind by the hackers. Peter explains how simple it was then to address the issue. "After that, it was only a matter of having my webmaster remove the line of poison code" and then filing an appeal with the search engines and browsers that had blacklisted his site. "The fix was easy and we were up and running again in about an hour or so."
Dasient is now watching over www.CardioLogix.com, and the company will be adding the Dasient Web Anti-Malware (WAM) service to every site that Cardiologix owns in the near future. In closing, Peter added "Don't make the mistake of thinking that it can't happen to you. At some point it will and you need every advantage to keep your business out of harm's way. My advice; don't wait to get the bad news, protect yourself and your livelihood now!"
|
Customer: www.agfax.com Vertical: Media/Content |
Background
Agfax.com is a content publisher that covers the agriculture industry in the US. They provide newsletters, reports, and other content on their website. They have over 15,000 subscribers to their email newsletter, and last year had 500,000 downloads of the reports that they provide on their website.
Challenge
Agfax.com was infected with a malware drive-by-download and blacklisted. "Our website is critical to our business presence," said Owen Taylor, Editor and Publisher, Agfax.com. "This was not something that we had ever dealt with before. The warning from Google stopped a lot of our traffic." In addition to the immediate traffic loss, agfax.com also suffered longer term effects due to reputation damage. "The attacks occurred weeks ago, and I'm only now getting back to my normal levels of traffic. We lost thousands of dollars of business in goodwill alone from our customers." Finally, AgFax also incurred significant technical support costs. " Dealing with this problem was also a monumental strain on my staff. Because we were fixing this problem in crisis mode, it tied up every free minute that anybody had."
Results
Owen and his team ran diagnostic scans of their service with Dasient's Web Anti-Malware (WAM) solution. They also signed up for Dasient WAM Monitoring to get an early warning about future attacks and avoid the traffic loss and emergency fixes that occur when a site gets blacklisted. "With the report I received from Dasient, I was able to provide all of the necessary information to my web hosting provider to clean up my website," Owen said. "Now that this problem was behind us, I wanted to have scans of our site done on an ongoing basis. With Dasient's monitoring service, my site is protected because they run regular scans that would notify us of any malware issues on the website. This would allow us to pre-emptively fix the malware issues before our site gets blacklisted again."
"I feel a lot better knowing that Dasient is protecting my website."