Cyberattack Forces Meat Producer to Shut Down Operations in U.S., Australia

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The world’s largest meat distributor shut down some operations in both the United States and Australia over the Memorial Day weekend after a cyberattack on its IT systems that could have a significant effect on the food supply chain if not resolved quickly.
 
Attackers targeted several servers supporting North American and Australian IT systems of JBS Foods on Sunday, according to a statement by JBS USA. JBS is a global provider of beef, chicken and pork with 245,000 employees operating on several continents and serving brands such as Country Pride, Swift, Certified Angus Beef, Clear River Farms and Pilgrim’s.
 
Upon discovering the incident—the nature of which was not specified–“the company took immediate action, suspending all affected systems, notifying authorities and activating the company’s global network of IT professionals and third-party experts to resolve the situation,” according to the statement.

JBS’s IT system does have backup servers, which were not affected, and the company is working with a third-party incident-response firm to restore operations as soon as possible, according to the statement.
 
Further, the company said that there is no evidence so far that “any customer, supplier or employee data has been compromised or misused as a result of the situation,” according to the statement. However, customers and suppliers may experience a delay in “certain transactions,” as a “resolution of the incident will take time,” the company said.
 
Though JBS did not disclose which of its U.S. operations were affected, in Australia JBS shut down operations across the states of Queensland, Victoria, New South Wales and Tasmania, according to JBS Australia CEO Brent Eastwood told Beef Central.

Without access to the internet and normal IT operations, Eastwood said that JBS could not conduct its usual processing operations, nor could its meat sales and lot feeding operations—the latter of which registers livestock entering into the supply chain—operate effectively, according to the report.

Read more: Cyberattack Forces Meat Producer to Shut Down Operations in U.S., Australia | Threatpost