United Natural Foods subject of an alleged cyberattack

United Natural Foods, one of North America’s largest publicly traded wholesale distributors, was forced to shut down several systems. Reports revealed that an alleged cyberattack had caused the disruption.

This affected company has 53 distribution centres and delivers fresh and frozen goods to over 30,000 locations across the United States and Canada. Hence, this incident impacted supermarket chains, e-commerce platforms, natural product superstores, small shops, and food service customers.

 

United Natural Foods explained that it uncovered the attack earlier this month.

 

In an 8-K filing with the United States, United Natural Foods said it discovered the cyberattack on June 5. This discovery prompted it to take certain systems offline, which impacted client orders.

Reports also revealed that the company immediately deployed its incident response plan and implemented containment measures, including proactively shutting down several systems. This issue momentarily impacted its ability to fulfil and distribute client orders.

Still, the incident has caused minor interruptions in the company’s activities, which are expected to persist. Since discovering the hack, the wholesale giant has notified the appropriate law enforcement agencies and hired outside cybersecurity specialists to investigate the matter.

UNFI has also taken steps to maintain customer service continuity by using workarounds until affected systems are restored. Currently, the company is investigating, mitigating, and remediating the incident with assistance from third-party service providers.

According to its business continuity plans, the company has found workarounds to keep some operations running to continue serving its customers whenever possible. The company is striving to recover its systems and safely restore them online.

This announcement follows extensive claims on social media since Thursday of the company’s systems being down and employees having their shifts cancelled.

UNFI has yet to reveal the details of the incident or clarify whether any data was stolen from its network.

Furthermore, no ransomware gangs have taken responsibility for the hack. As previously reported on May 20, the company will disclose its financial results for the fiscal 2025 third quarter on Tuesday.