ServerVault Successfully Defeats SQL Worm

Dulles, VA (February 3, 2003) - ServerVault, the primary managed security and hosting provider for Excedent Technologies and the No. 1-ranked secure managed hosting company in the world, successfully protected hundreds of severs recently against the proliferation of the "SQL hell" worm. Widespread reports of the SQL worm taking down entire networks and systems were common as news of the worm's impact spread.

"Our early warning and prevention system allows us to be ready for the latest attacks. One of our base services is patch management for all our customers, so all servers had been successfully patched to prevent the SQL attack," said Patrick J. Sweeney II, ServerVault president and chief executive officer. "Attacks like this are exactly why people choose us, we are the only hosting provider that includes full managed security services with 99.999 percent guaranteed uptime."

ServerVault sets a normalcy baseline for hosted solutions and responds to threats outside the state of normalcy. ServerVault's SuperCore proprietary correlation analysis and predictive technologies allow the company to compare the current state with a baseline of known signatures collected over literally billions of bits of traffic. This enables attacks such as the SQL worm to be quickly identified and defeated.

"This worm was so vicious that even if only one or two servers were compromised in your data center, huge problems would be created for the entire network," commented Bill Boebel, Chief Technology Officer for Excedent. "It is a great comfort knowing that our network is proactively guarded by ServerVault, preventing these wide spread attacks from impacting our customers' webmail and email hosting services."

About Excedent Technologies
Excedent Technologies is a global leader in email hosting solutions, providing small businesses and service providers around the world with secure, reliable, Spam-free, Virus-free email. The company is privately held and has been serving customers since 1999.

About ServerVault
Dulles-based ServerVault specializes in hosting secure intranets, extranets, Web applications and Web sites for clients in the financial, enterprise, healthcare and government sectors. ServerVault is the top-ranked secure managed hosting provider, according to independent sources such as Meta Group and Tier One Research.

The company has a growing customer base of Fortune 1000 and global companies, including Capital One, Citigroup, Hartford Life Insurance, Raytheon, National Football League, United States Chamber of Commerce and clients of the United States Federal Government. ServerVault delivers the industry's most robust service-level agreements, with 99.999 percent reliability. The company's platform is substantially different from other hosting providers, offering 50 discrete points of protection and extensive proprietary technology. ServerVault operates the only commercially available data center built to Department of Defense standards. ServerVault is wholly owned by affiliates of Cincinnati-based Fort Washington Investment Advisors, Inc., a member of Western & Southern Financial Group. For more information, visit www.servervault.com or call 1.877.78.VAULT.

About Western & Southern Financial Group
Western & Southern Financial Group has approximately $28 billion in assets owned and under management. The Cincinnati-based diversified family of financial services companies is one of only 10 life groups in the world to earn Standard & Poor's AAA rating.

Western & Southern also is consistently recognized by A.M. Best, Moody's and Fitch for financial strength and sound management. With a heritage dating to 1888, the group's affiliates include The Western and Southern Life Insurance Company, Western-Southern Life Assurance Company, Columbus Life Insurance Company, Integrity Life Insurance Company, Fort Washington Investment Advisors Inc.,¹ Eagle Realty Group LLC and Touchstone Securities Inc.²

For more information, visit www.westernsouthern.com or call 1.800.333.5152.

¹A registered investment advisor.
²A registered broker-dealer and member of NASD/SIPC.

Ratings refer to the financial strength of the insurance company and not to the safety, stability, or performance of any investment product.