About 6 years ago, before EMV chip readers where a thing for restaurants, Krebs on Security reported that a group of restaurants in Colorado had experienced a hack from a Ukrainian server. He named my company, Advanced Restaurant Management as the POS vendor that serviced the accounts. At the time, we were a reseller for FuturePOS, a company that has since been purchased by Shift4. Several FuturePOS dealers experienced the same issue including Information System and Supplies in Portland OR and FuturePOS Ohio in Akron Ohio.
At the time I was thrown into the cyber security fight of my life, spending the better part of 6 months scouring and eradicating the malware. In conjunction with 2 Secret Service agents from the Denver Office, we set out to derail the cyber attack and identify IP addresses that were receiving the data that the malware was transmitting to. As a former IT Director for a county government, I pooled all available resources to monitor, mitigate and trace all infected systems and stop the hack.
The point of this post is to let everyone know that while it was very uncomfortable to see the name of MY company being called out by Kreb on Security, I full support Brian Krebs and the valuable service he provides to the Cyber Security community. Today, ARMA is a vibrant company providing the best Restaurant POS systems and service in the Rocky Mountain region. Krebs on Security made me a better POS vendor and today we provide the most secure POS solution for restaurants including Online Ordering and contactless payments.
I would encourage anyone reading this post to go to Change.org and sign the open letter to Chris Krebs for standing up to the current administration and securing our election systems. While it may be uncomfortable being called out for a lack of cyber security, both Chis and Brian Krebs have provided all of us with a great service.