The integrated facility services provider ISS World recently suffered a cyber-attack that caused its websites to go down for a few days and disrupted email services. It was reported that the attack left nearly 43,000 UK staff without email access. While ISS World declined to state that it was ransomware, the BBC reported that it actually was. The company claims that a majority of their employees do not use computers to do their jobs, but the effect from the attack was felt throughout the entire company. ISS World and a team of cyber-security experts have begun recovery efforts in Denmark where the company is headquartered. IT services were temporarily disabled, purposefully, but all of their customer-facing resources were operating fully.
Analyst Notes
While these attacks are becoming more and more common, there are good defense-in-depth strategies that can be followed to help better protect a company. Some of these practices include Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR), network segmentation, regular data backups, multi-factor authentication, and least privilege access policies. More information can be found here: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51572575
