Despite temporarily shutting down the business's activities in Australia, a cyber-attack on the world's largest meatpacking company, JBS, is not likely to impair meat supplies in the country.
Due to a ransomware attack, JBS had to shut down 47 of its locations across Australia on Monday. Ransomware is a type of cyberattack in which hackers encrypt systems and data and force organizations to pay money to release them.
The attack had shut up the systems JBS utilized for quality assurance in the meat processing, according to Australia's agricultural minister, David Littleproud.
The Brazilian firm said on Tuesday that the attack had harmed operations in Australia and North America, but that backup systems were gradually being restored.
In a statement, JBS USA CEO Andre Nogueira said, "Our systems are going back online, and we are not spare any efforts to battle this danger."
The great majority of JBS's beef, hog, poultry, and prepared food operations will be operational within the next day, according to the company. On Tuesday, a number of the plants reopened for business.
While there had been concerns that the attack would result in a meat scarcity across the two continents, JBS claimed it was able to ship products from nearly all of its plants in the United States to meet consumer demand. The Australian Meat Industry Council said there was no evidence it would affect supply in Australia.
In a statement, AMIC's chief executive, Patrick Hutchinson, said, "The Australian meat industry has processes in place across the supply chain to cope with these types of difficulties, including properly managing cattle through the system and availability to cold storage for meat supply."
“The red meat and pork products supply chain's strength and flexibility have been proved in the past on market access concerns and Covid-19 consequences. That is why we are known around the world as the most dependable meat supply chain.”
The FBI, as well as Australian and Canadian officials, have been assisting JBS with the location of the hackers, who are thought to be in Russia.
JBS had provided details of the hack to the White House, the US had alerted Russia's government about the situation, and the FBI was investigating, according to White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre.
“The White House has given JBS support, and our staff at the USDA has spoken with their leadership multiple times in the last day,” Jean-Pierre added.
“JBS informed the administration that the ransom demand was likely made by a criminal organization based in Russia,” according to the statement. On this issue, the White House is actively engaging with the Russian government, sending a message that responsible states do not harbor ransomware criminals,” Jean-Pierre noted.
At this time, the organization has no evidence that any customer, supplier, or employee data has been compromised.
The ransomware attack follows one that hampered fuel distribution in the US south-east for many days last month on Colonial Pipeline, the country's largest fuel pipeline.
