"We had an authentication issue," says Scott Fleszar, VP of strategic marketing. The problem started about 9:20 a.m. and lasted into the afternoon. Those who logged on before the issue began had no problems continuing to use the system. However, those making the attempt to use it later could not log in.

In the 14 years the company has offered Virtual Office "It was certainly the longest situation we evern had," says Fleszar, who adds that, "We are up and running at peak performance" and that the company has taken steps to make sure the problem does not recur.

Fleszar says Thomson assured users the problem had nothing to do with any hacking or denial of service attacks and rested solely on the authentication problem. The company also kept them informed of progress via the website and other means. "We had a very comprehesnvie comunicaiton plan," says Fleszar.

Fleszar says that Thomson's systems had 100 percent up time in 2012 and for 2013 was running with very  high availablity until Friday's problems arose.