Fireside21

The Fireside21 team has been working remote for 5 days now! It has been an interesting week, but I thought I would remind everyone that you can access all your Fireside accounts remotely too.

As we mentioned in our recent security post, you need to be on the House network to access your account, but you don’t physically need to be on the Hill to connect.

The House provides a Virtual Private Network (VPN) service that when combined with an HIR-provided SecurID allows you to securely connect to the House network from anywhere. If you don’t already have a SecurID, you will need to fill out a form on this HouseNet page.

By the way, this iPhone screenshot is real. There is a built-in VPN on all iPhones…and here’s a trick to take screenshots: press the Sleep/Wake and Home buttons at the same time and you’ll find a screenshot in your photo library.

We have received a number of calls and emails from clients about last night’s hacker attack on Congressional web sites. First of all, no Fireside21 client web sites were impacted by this attack.

I don’t know for sure exactly how these sites got hacked—I would just be speculating without conducting an audit of server logs. I do want to take this opportunity to re-assure our clients of things we do at Fireside21 to protect our client’s web site and constituent data.

Our system is safer for several reasons:

1. Our web servers run the latest software and have anti-hacking protection built-in.
2. We write our own software and adhere to the best practices for handing anonymous input.
3. All our administrative functions are limited to the house network, which means hackers have to breach the house firewall before they can even try to access our admin servers.
4. All administrative logins are encrypted with the same technology used by banks and online stores.
5. We lock accounts that enter too many bad passwords, making it hard for hackers to try and guess your password.

One thing I recommend for everyone is to be careful with your usernames and passwords. Pick a complex password, change it often, and don’t let anyone know what it is!