BOCA RATON, FLORIDA—Deborah Roos, co-owner and co-founder of Roos International, a provider of high-end architectural products and materials for hotels, restaurants, and office buildings, knew she could count on the team at Boca Computer’s managed services to handle all her company’s computer networking, maintenance, and cybersecurity needs. But she never expected their services to include sleuthing for and stopping a cybercriminal who had intercepted a large payment from one of her clients.
The incident started innocuously, with one of Roos’s associates emailing an invoice to the client, a buyer for a hotel chain. Soon after, the client received an email asking that the payment be sent to a car dealership in Texas, nowhere near Roos’s headquarters in Deerfield Beach, FLA. Not questioning this odd request, the client sent the check.
“We found out later that our client’s email had gotten hacked,” Roos said. Upon finding out that the check intended for her company had been intercepted, she called her intellectual property attorney and did some investigating on her own. And she also called Rob Kennedy at Boca Computer—even though it wasn’t their system that had been hacked, she knew he’d know what to do and would be willing to help.
Kennedy checked the emails sent to Roos’s client about the payment and quickly noticed the problem: The emails asking that the payment be sent to Texas weren’t from a Roos International email account. Whoever had intercepted the original email to the client had spoofed their domain name and set up a nearly identical domain name and set of email addresses. “They only changed out a lowercase ‘l’ for the number ‘1’ in the domain name, so it was nearly impossible to notice,” Roos said. “But Rob caught it.”
Kennedy then advised Roos to contact the domain name registry to have the fake web page taken down, and her attorney managed to get the fake domain shut down by the next day. Meanwhile, she contacted the bank in Texas to which her client’s check had been deposited, explained the situation, and had the funds returned to her client.
They’re amazing—I’d be lost without them
This disturbing incident reminded Roos how fortunate she is to have a dependable and knowledgeable partner to handle all her business’s technology needs. Boca Computer’s 24/7 monitoring and maintenance not only free her team from taking time from their work to handle software updates and changes to their system, it means they can always get help or answers to their questions if a problem does arise. And in this case, Kennedy and his team were ready to help Roos with a problem that wasn’t directly related to their system.
“They’re amazing—I’d be lost without them,” Roos said.
Based in Research Park at Florida Atlantic University® in Boca Raton, Florida, Boca Computer is an IT services company focused on proactive solutions, including managed services, cloud solutions, network support, and security and business continuity solutions, all delivered with an eye to exceptional customer service.
For more information, contact Rob Kennedy at (561) 715-9119
