Foreign exchange company Travelex has started to recover some of the services it was forced to close down due to a virus discovered on New Year’s Eve.
Having discovered the ransomware attack, Travelex suspended several of its digital services. This also affected its partners, like Samsung Pay, that used Travelex’s services and were also crippled by the attack.
The virus that caused all the problems has been identified as Sidinokibi, which is also known as REvil and has been named as one of the four worst ransomware programs out there.
Now, Travelex has announced that it is beginning to reopen several of its customer-facing systems in the UK. It has also started to restore some of its systems around the world.
“We have made good progress in our recovery and I’m pleased to say our first customer-facing systems are now successfully live,” said Tony D’Souza, CEO of Travelex. “We have a clear strategy for the phased restoration of services, prioritising the UK as this is our single largest market.
“We have started restoring forex order processing electronically in our UK stores and in some of our UK retail partner locations, and we are also now starting our VAT refund service in UK airports.
“Our priority throughout our recovery is to ensure that systems are brought back up in a controlled, secure and managed way. In addition to the restoration of some retail capabilities, we are also now in the advanced stages of testing the systems supporting bank note orders by our UK high street banking partners.”
The company has restored some of the in-branch systems used by front-line staff to provide foreign exchange services in its own and its partners’ stores in the UK.
The testing of the systems supporting UK VAT refunds is also near completion, which will enable Travelex staff to electronically log VAT refunds via its systems in airport branches in the UK.
Travelex has stated that it will phase in the process of restoring the systems to ensure the integrity and security of its systems.
The foreign exchange firm also said it was making good progress on restoring its proprietary UK International Money Transfer Service, which will be available by the end of the month.
The company has also reopened the automated order placement service used by a number of our UK high street banking partners.
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