Japan’s Eisai revealed suffering from a ransomware attack

The Japanese pharmaceutical company, Eisai, disclosed that it experienced a ransomware incident that disrupted its operations. The company also admitted that the threat actors encrypted some of its servers.

Eisai is a pharmaceutical company in Tokyo, Japan, that earns an annual revenue of $5.3 billion that is home to about 10,000 employees. The company also manages fifteen medical research and nine manufacturing units in multiple countries, such as Japan, the US, and the UK.

Moreover, the company creates and produces medication for various cancer types and chemotherapy side effects.

 

The Eisai attackers may have picked the weekend to exploit the understaffed target.

 

Based on reports, the Eisai pharmaceutical company revealed they had observed the ransomware attack on the weekends. Researchers noted that ransomware attackers commonly deploy their encryptors since some IT teams are not present and are off-shift.

The company notified the relevant individuals about the attack and claimed that the incident occurred earlier this month, Saturday, June 3.

Fortunately, this Tokyo-based company immediately implemented their incident response plan and initiated an investigation to help its cybersecurity partners dissect the attack. Furthermore, the company launched a company-wide task force to develop a response procedure quickly.

The pharmaceutical company have also started isolating their IT systems to mitigate the damage’s impact and prevent the intrusion’s spread to further portions of the affected corporate network.

In addition, several systems within Japan and international branches of the company are now offline. Logistics systems are also unavailable. Researchers believe the company will make its services online again after the investigation concludes. As of now, the remaining functioning services of the company are email communications and corporate websites.

Eisai immediately reported this incident to law enforcement agencies and employed third-party security experts to hasten the investigation and acquire immediate answers.

The company has yet to rule out the possibility of data leaks these times; hence, several critical information are at risk. The researchers have also yet to see the attack’s impact on the company’s consolidated earnings force for the current year.

No known ransomware groups have claimed responsibility for the ransomware attack against this Japan-based pharmaceutical company.