It's not without saying that I care passionately about the Pride of Nottingham and Notts County.
Our recent downtime had been caused by a cyberattack, where hacker(s) caused significant damage to our site. This attack is unjustified and the people responsible cannot validate their actions. Football is about unity, whilst rivalry is a natural part of the game. To resort to this type of behaviour is very cowardly and in the long run what did it achieve? No amount of excuses can humanly explain this behaviour.
At this stage, I can't go into the full details, but there will be a point where I will provide a further update.
I fully believe in transparency and accountability, I hold my hands up and say that I should have done better, and I can honestly say I will learn from this in the future. I will ensure that the best practices are used to avoid such a pathetic attack. I can say, without a doubt, that only damage was conflicted. No data was accessed. Passwords are encrypted within the database and nothing was retrieved.
I have made sure to check this, along with a friend who is a very knowledgable person within this field.
We could have been back somewhat sooner, although I did take the time to move hosts. You should notice the benefit of us running a dedicated server, with a lot more resources behind us. I wanted to ensure that we thoroughly inspected every area of the site, considering the extensive number of files. It is important to dedicate sufficient time to this task. The worst scenario would be to neglect corners and wish for the best.
Further security is being used and whilst I politely ask that we focus on the positives, not the issue I outlined in the start.
I do share your frustration about the downtime. I sincerely hope if you read this you will get behind the Pride of Nottingham, and we can firmly pick up from where we were previously. COYP!
All the best.
Chris