Operations at $17 billion packaging firm WestRock were disrupted Saturday by a ransomware attack that impacted both its IT and operational technology (OT) networks.
The attack has already caused, and will likely continue to cause, delays in some parts of the company's business, WestRock announced on Monday, without offering any details regarding the nature of the attack or the disruptions.
"We are working around the clock to complete our investigation and to restore normalized operations as quickly as possible," Steve Voorhees, WestRock's chief executive officer, said in a statement. "WestRock teams are taking extraordinary steps to keep our mills and converting plants operational and to safely deliver to our customers."
The statement noted that WestRock is working with security vendors on system recovery efforts and on minimizing impact on customers. The company described the incident as likely leading to a loss of revenue and incremental costs that could affect its bottom line.
The ransomware incident at the paper and packaging giant is another reminder of the highly vulnerable nature of OT environments at many organizations, says John Livingston, CEO at Verve Industrial. In recent years, a growing number of companies have connected once air-gapped industrial control systems and OT networks to the Internet, for a variety of reasons.
But few have implemented any kind of security for protecting endpoint devices on these networks. In fact, besides some basic kind of DMZ and other network controls, many of the mostly Windows PCs, network components, and embedded devices, such as ..
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