The Guardian newspaper disrupted by a ransomware attack

One of the world’s most well-known news publishers, The Guardian, has suffered a ransomware attack, which forced its heads to dismiss their staff for the rest of the day.

The cybercriminal activity allegedly occurred in the 3rd week of December. Based on reports, the attack has impacted a portion of the company’s technology infrastructure and behind-the-scenes services.

The newspaper company has mandated its employees to work from home for the remaining schedule of last week due to the disruption. However, some researchers believe the ransomware attack has not affected the company’s online publishing.

 

Representatives of The Guardian newspaper company explained that they needed to adapt during this incident to continue their services.

 

According to The Guardian Media Group CEO and editor-in-chief, a severe incident within their firm has affected their IT network and systems. In addition, both claimed that it was a ransomware attack even though there is still an ongoing investigation to find all possible causes.

Fortunately, both heads of the company assured everyone that they would continue to publish news worldwide through their website and applications. The CEO and editor-in-chief admitted that their internal systems are impacted, but they are confident they could continue their printed copies in the following days.

Their technology teams have been addressing the incident and scouring their systems to assess the situation. The company could adapt to the problem quickly since it had already worked from home during the pandemic.

Currently, the effects of the cybercriminal incident have not yet been assessed. Hence, they still need to know if the ransomware operators have stolen the sensitive data during the attack.

Cybersecurity experts explained that the ransomware attack against The Guardian could be a standard malware-based attack and could be mitigated by anyone if they knew basic security methods.

Experts stated that applying basic cyber hygiene such as network segmentation, regular patching, vulnerability assessments, and preparing backups could significantly improve cyber defences.

Lastly, every employee should also be well-trained in spotting malicious entities since most ransomware attacks start from a simple intrusion method.