Kaseya

Kaseya is a Dublin- and Miami-based software company developing software for managing networks, systems, and information technology infrastructure. The company was founded in 2000 by Gerald Blackie, who served as the company's CEO until Insight Venture Partners acquired it in June of 2013. Since its founding in 2000, Kaseya has acquired thirteen other companies, including RocketCyber, RapidFire Tools, Graphus, IT Glue, and more.

On July 2, 2021, Kaseya and various other managed service providers (MSPs) and their customers fell victim to a ransomware attack perpetrated by the group REvil, a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operation. Within hours, the attack source was identified to be a Kaseya software package called VSA, a remote monitoring and management software. Due to an error in the VSA platform, various attackers successfully hit several targets at once.

According to Kaseya CEO Fred Voccola, less than 0.1% of the company's customers were affected by the attack. Still, because the company's clientele includes MSPs, small businesses were included in that percentage. As a result, Voccola urged VSA users to shut down their servers immediately, stating:

"It's critical that you do this immediately because one of the first things the attacker does is shut off administrative access to the VSA."

While the Kaseya Incident Response team was investigating the VSA attack, the company dynamically shut down its SaaS servers and pulled its data centers offline. Kaseya provided an update on July 5, 2021, stating a fix had been developed for the software and that it would be deployed after testing and validation checks were completed.

REvil, a Russian group of hackers, did take responsibility for the attack and demanded $70 million in ransom monies to unlock the computers that had been adversely impacted during the July 2nd initiative. The group claimed it had encrypted more than one million systems during the incident; however, Kaysea's investigation led the company to believe no more than sixty customers and less than 1,500 downstream businesses had been impacted by REvil's efforts.