Three weeks ago, in a stunning raid, Russian hackers seized control of the servers that support one of the Internet’s largest online gaming operations, demanding a ransom. It was a real-life, high-tech version of the movie Ocean’s Eleven. By the time the ransom was paid, one key server — the one containing all operational data for 120 Internet gaming sites and a long list of consulting clients — seemed to be stripped of its data. At stake were all the operational records of a gambling empire. “We didn’t even have the names of customers,” says Juan Bonilla, executive vice-president of Grafix Softech F.A. of San Juan, Costa Rica. “We lost everything.” To make matters worse, little, if any, of the data had been backed up off-site. Grafix Softech was losing an estimated US$75,000 a day in profits, and the incident left it open to lawsuits from customers whose businesses relied on Grafix Softech’s services. What could have been a major disaster became a bump in the corporate road. In an amazing feat of ingenuity, CBL Data Recovery Technologies Inc. of Markham, Ont., managed to recover all the lost data. It was a close call, admits Bill Margeson, president of CBL. Full Story