heartbleedBy now you may have read about an extremely widespread issue affecting nearly every SSL (encrypted) site on the planet.  This bug has affected most financial institutions, Google, Yahoo, Amazon, etc (the list goes on).

Rentec engineers subscribe to security lists to keep informed of any threats to the industry and the moment this vulnerability was made public our engineers immediately went to work to verify the integrity of our websites and your data.  We are pleased to inform you that even though this bug is wide-spread, our engineers have confirmed the bug is not present within the Rentec systems and your data is absolutely safe.  This is because the versions of the openssl application that posessed this vulnerability is not used by Rentec’s secure servers.  The version we utilize does not contain the vulnerability.  Even beyond this first level of encryption, Rentec deploys a secondary level of encryption which is also not affected by this bug to safeguard your most sensitive data.

Following the advice of many industry professionals, we would recommend to use caution when entering any private information (including usernames and passwords) on any websites that have not already confirmed that they have patched their system to prevent this vulnerability or were not affected.  For any websites which were affected, it would be wise to change your password for those services.  It’s always a terrific idea to use a different password for each online service you utilize.

For more information, here is an excellent article at CNET giving advice on how to protect yourself from this bug.