South African insurer Liberty Holdings Ltd recently refused to pay ransom after its systems were compromised. As a result, the 60 year old company’s shares dropped by 4 percent after the ransomware attack. Liberty has close to 3 million life insurance policies and it also holds more than 9,000 retirement plans as well as 500,000 clients related to various institutions.
According to the CEO David Munro, the attack mostly affected the content of their emails as their security team found while trying to remove ransomware. Due to the investigations, the amount of ransom demanded or the details of the attackers have not been made public.
Affected Data
The major aim of the attack was to grab hold of the content of Liberty’s emails as well as any files attached in them. Sources also point towards Standard Bank Group Ltd’s to be affected by this breach. However, Mr.Munro has refused any harm to Standard Bank’s data and attributed the attack to be aimed at gaining the contents of Liberty’s emails by bypassing their IT infrastructure. Moreover, the emails that were targeted were the recent ones in their systems.
Defiance in the Face of Adversity
Mr.Munro also cleared that they were not willing to be blackmailed and pay any ransom to the attackers. They did communicate with the attackers in order to get a hold of their ambitions. Currently, they are engaged in the necessary ransomware removal steps.
Clients were Saved
Initial ransomware removal investigation has prompted Mr.Munro to release a positive statement and he has ensured that no harm was done to the investment and financing data of any client as Liberty’s IT team worked extremely hard to save their clients’ critical data. In order to calm their clients and take them into confidence, Liberty sent a text message to all their clients and assured them of support.
South Africa’s Information Regulator has been worried by these recent ransomware attacks that are targeting to get hold of critical data from organizations. Moreover, a meeting is organized with Mr.Munro to discuss the attack.
If you are an organization that works primarily with data, then you need to be vigilant regarding ransomware removal.
