British engineering firm Smiths Group is working to restore systems after a cyberattack rendered them offline. The company has yet to disclose information on the hackers or the nature of the attack but claimed that the intruders gained unauthorised access to some of its systems.
In a rather brief incident notice shared on its website on January 28, the company confirmed unauthorised access to its systems and claimed that it “rapidly isolated affected systems and activated business continuity plans” as soon as the intruders were detected. Its filing with the London Stock Exchange was identical, with more updates promised as and when appropriate. Smiths Group stock has been on a downward trend, dropping 2.3 percent since.
As is usual with early cybersecurity incident filings, no information on the actual cyberattack has yet been revealed. The company is working with “cyber security experts to recover affected systems and determine any wider impact on the business.”
Smiths Group has around 15,000 employees in over 50 countries and provides critical infrastructure services for aerospace, defence, energy, safety and security, chemical, water, mining, life sciences, and other industries. Any breach in data that affects its customers or leaks any company information can prove critical.
Candid.Technology did not find any major ransomware groups taking responsibility for the attack or stolen data from the company being sold on cybercrime forums at the time of writing. This could suggest that the company might be negotiating with the hackers if the attack is indeed ransomware in nature.
Negotiating with the hackers and paying the ransom isn’t advisable. However, for mission-critical services like the ones offered by Smiths Group or other organisations in the healthcare sector (an increasingly lucrative target for cybercriminals), this might be the quickest way to address the situation, especially if they don’t have the technical expertise or resources to bounce back on their own. That said, the UK government’s decision to ban ransomware payments could put an end to this in the future.
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