Demant , one of the largest hearing aid manufacturers, was hit by a ransomware attack in early September. The company estimates the cost of the attack to be over $95 million.
So far, we knew that the largest losses from a similar attack were $300 million, when the NotPetya ransomware targeted shipping giant Maersk and courier service FedEx.
Another major incident was the attack on the aluminum producer, Norsk Hydro. The losses reached 70 million dollars. As it turns out, the attack on Demant is one of the largest attacks.
The attack took place in early September. On the 3rd of the month, Demant announced on its website that it had taken its internal IT infrastructure offline due to a "critical incident.".
The company did not provide much information regarding the incident. It did not explain exactly what happened to network , simply stating that its “IT infrastructure was subjected to a cyber attack.”
Danish media are reporting a ransomware attack and believe it originated from abroad.
The company itself stated that all of systems , and seriously so.
Specifically, the attack affected the company's ERP system, the amplifier manufacturing plant in Denmark, the production and distribution plants in Poland, the factories in Mexico, the cochlear implant manufacturing plants in France, and all of the company's systems in the Asia-Pacific regions.
Unlike other companies, which recover quickly after such an attack, Demant took weeks. In fact, it is still in the recovery process and will need at least two more weeks to fully recover.
This confirms that this is a ransomware attack, as this much recovery time has only been observed in such attacks.
Consequences
The attack caused major problems for the company, as employees were unable to access the systems for a period of time.
The company reported that there were delays in supplying products. There were also problems receiving orders.
Demant said the company's losses are expected to reach $80 million to $95 million.
Most of the losses stem from lost sales and the inability to deliver orders. The cost of recovering and rebuilding the systems was only $7.3 million.
“About half of the estimated sales losses are related to the business wholesale. The incident prevented us from carrying out our ambitious growth activities during the most important months of the year – particularly in the US, which is our largest market,” said Demant.
Also, according to the company, many clinics were unable to serve patients.
In terms of retail sales, Demant believes the greatest damage occurred in Australia, the US, Canada and the UK.
The company believes that the consequences of this attack will be long-lasting. This incident once again shows how important it is for a business to invest in cybersecurity .
