Australian Beverage Manufacturer Shutdown IT Systems After Cyberattack

A cyberattack forced Australian beverage manufacturer Lion to shut down its IT system, interrupting manufacturing and orders, the company disclosed on June 9.

“We immediately shut down all our systems as a precaution, and we have continued to work with cyber experts to determine how much longer our systems will be impacted,” the company said.

While there is no evidence of a data breach, the company is still investigating the incident that halted its brewery output across the country. To continue serving customers and partners, Lion adopted manual systems to receive and process orders.

“This attack could not have come at a worse time for Lion, particularly for our valued pub and club customers who are in the very early stages of recovery following the COVID-19 closures,”said company officials. “In the Dairy & Drinks business, some parts of customer service still remain offline and whilst we are operating across most of our manufacturing network, due to the nature of fresh dairy and juice products there have been some service misses in some customer channels as we have worked to manually key and pick orders.”

Making matters worse, the disruption of business follows a major IT upgrade project that spanned across a two-year period. The technological enhancement implied centralizing the company”s 500 applications into one cloud-based platform.

No additional information was provided, but the possibility of ransomware attack can”t be excluded.

This is not the first malicious attack to affect an Aussie business this year. Toll, a leading transportation company, was hit by two ransomware attacks, in which malicious actors managed to steal sensitive information and disrupt business operations. Additionally, BlueScope Steel suffered a company-wide cease of production after a ransomware attack at their US-based facilities.

Malicious actors are on top of their game and continue to wreak havoc worldwide. It has become critical for organizations and businesses to make sure that their IT systems and networks are protected from cyber threats while also ensuring that their remote workforce follows good cyber hygiene patterns.