Are companies rising to meet the threat?
In an interview with WSJ in 2021, Marene Allison, the then chief information security officer at Johnson & Johnson mentioned that the company saw around 15.5 billion cyber incidents a day.
Pharma companies have always been on the target list of attackers. However, post Covid, the threat has become even greater.
An ISG Valuelabs report states that with an increased demand for healthcare and an increase in public funds during the coronavirus era, pharmaceutical companies are at the center of public attention for potential profits associated with the COVID-19 vaccine.
Early this month, Indian drugmaker Sun Pharmaceuticals suffered an Information Technology (IT) security incident. A ransomware group claimed responsibility for this incident.
In a BSE filing on 26th March, Sun Pharma stated that due to this incident revenues are expected to be reduced in some of its business. “The Company promptly took steps to contain and remediate the impact of the IT security incident, including employing containment and eradication protocols to mitigate the threat and additional measures to ensure the integrity of its systems infrastructure and data.”
According to Sun Pharma, the incident’s effect on its IT systems included a breach of certain file systems and the theft of certain company data and personal data. The company did not mention where the attack originated or the exact data that had been breached.
While the pharma sector is contributing to the economy and human welfare, it is struggling to protect its infrastructure from organised and well-funded hacking groups.
Here are some of the major attacks on pharma companies over the last few years:
NotPetya attack disrupts Merck’s operations
In 2017, Merck reported that its computer systems were affected by the NotPetya ransomware attack. The attack destroyed data on more than 40,000 Merck computers, and the resulting losses were around $1.4 billion.
Winnti attacks on Roche
Pharmaceutical company Roche confirmed that it was hit by hacker group Winnti, thought to be supported by the Chinese government.
Data breach at Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories
In 2020, Dr. Reddy’s experienced an information security incident due to which it had to shut down all its production facilities across the world.
Attack on IPCA Laboratories and Aarti Drugs
In 2022, an extortion group called RansomHouse attacked IPCA. The group claimed to have stolen 500 gigabytes of data from its systems. Aarti Drugs suffered a data leak after the BianLian ransomware group posted its confidential information on the Dark Web forum.
