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Hey {{First Name| there}},
Your HRMS goes offline on payday. What’s the plan? 👀
Last week, thousands of HR teams opened their HR platform mid pay cycle and found a maintenance page. No confirmed breach. Just a precaution against a flaw in software that runs much of the web. Here is what it means for your team.
📌 In This Edition We Cover
🔌 What happened and why an HR platform went dark
🤖 Why days like this may become more common
🧭 What a “minimum viable” HR function looks like
✅ What HR should do this week
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1️⃣ What Happened
A major HR platform took its systems offline in the US, Canada and Ireland as a precaution against PHP2Shell, a pair of critical flaws in PHP.
⏱️ Service was back within hours, and no customer data access has been confirmed
🚨 Both flaws were rated 9.2 out of 10 for severity, and either could let an attacker run code on a server without logging in
🌐 PHP runs roughly 7 in 10 websites whose server language can be identified, including WordPress sites like careers pages, intranets and benefits portals
🏛️ Governments in Finland, the Netherlands and Belgium took public services offline too
Not an attack on HR. A precaution. And it still stopped payroll.
2️⃣ Why This Will Keep Happening
Researchers at Wiz said the underlying bugs existed for decades, and that turning them into a working attack was extremely hard. Frontier AI models substantially reduced that barrier, they said.
If the gap between a flaw being found and a working exploit keeps shrinking, emergency patch days become routine. Your vendors will go dark more often. Your plan needs to assume it.
3️⃣ Plan for the First 72 Hours
HBR’s survey of 1,000 senior executives across 13 countries found two common beliefs are dangerously wrong: that strong defences will prevent disruption, and that a well-written continuity plan will manage it.
The fastest recoverers define a “minimum viable enterprise”: the essential outcomes, decisions and manual fallbacks that must keep running while everything else is down.
For HR, that list is short:
💸 Payroll still goes out
📣 Employees hear from you first
🔐 Sensitive data stays protected
As Paychex puts it: a cyber incident does not pause your payroll calendar. Assign roles and draft communication templates before you need them.
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4️⃣ What HR Should Do This Week
📅 Check your payroll calendar and agree a fallback with finance, such as rerunning the last approved payroll or paying a set amount and correcting later
📣 Draft the employee message now: what is down, why, what HR is doing and where to get help. Vague “maintenance” notices make people more anxious
🎣 Warn staff about fake login emails and confirm any bank detail change by phone
🔍 Ask your vendors in writing whether they use PHP and have patched. Include whoever runs your careers site and intranet
🤝 Get IT and HR on one plan. HR is the only function that touches the whole employee lifecycle, so access, offboarding and incident comms need to be shared
😮💨 Check in on your IT team. Patch nights are long ones
Your HRMS will go down someday. Payday will still happen.
🎉 What's Coming Up!
TSOW HR Meetup in Indore | November 21 — Shared stories, practical frameworks, and insights you can take back to your team right away. Save your spot!
TSOW HR Meetup in Gurugram | November 21 — Peer-driven discussions built for HR leaders who think in solutions. Get your seat while spots last.
TSOW HR Meetup in Ahmedabad | November 21 — Good rooms, honest people, and conversations that make Monday feel lighter. Join the Meetup
TSOW HR Meetup in Bangalore | November 21 — Smaller room, bigger conversations — the kind that stick with you after. Reserve your spot!
💬If your HRMS went dark on payday, what would you do? Drop it in#general-q&a — our leaders are ready to answer. 🙌
The TSOW HR Pulse lands every Tuesday. Got something to share? You know where to find us.
