Brewing giant Molson Coors revealed on Thursday that it has experienced a ‘cybersecurity incident’ that has disrupted its operations and beer production. The cyberattack forced the beverage manufacturer to take its system offline, including affected portions of its production and distribution operations.
The company did not share details of which type of attack has caused widespread troubles across its entire business, however, given the recent history of major attacks on several companies, security experts are speculating that it could have been a ransomware attack. “Molson Coors experienced a system outage that was caused by a cybersecurity incident,” the company said in a statement.
To investigate the incident, Molson Coors has engaged leading forensic information technology firms and legal counsel to assist the company’s internal investigation and is working to get systems back up as quickly as possible.
Niamh Muldoon, global data protection officer at identity and access management specializes OneLogin, said high-profile manufacturers were particularly at risk from cyber attacks of this nature. “Ransomware remains a global cybersecurity threat and is the one cybercrime that has a high direct return of investment associated with it, by holding the victim’s ransom for financial payment,” she stated.
“On a global scale, cybercriminals will continue to focus their efforts on this revenue-generating stream. This reinforces what we’ve said before that no industry is exempt from the ransomware threat and it requires constant focus, assessment, and review to ensure that critical information assets remain safeguarded and protected against it,” she further added.
Edgard Capdevielle, CEO at Nozomi Networks, a specialist in operational technology security added: “High profile attacks are becoming all too common, as attackers have realized they are immensely profitable when they target large organizations and disrupt their critical business operations – in this case, the brewing operations of the world’s biggest, well-known beer brands.”
This is not the first high-profile cybersecurity incident as of late. Last week, threat actors targeted hundreds of thousands of Microsoft Exchange users around the globe and leaked private information on the dark web.