RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – According to Australian media, the world’s largest meat processor, JBS has been paralyzed over the weekend by a major cyberattack on its global information technology systems.
Multinational company JBS, which is also the largest meat processor in Australia, had its global information systems brought down on the weekend. JBS has a network of 47 facilities with abattoirs and feedlots in NSW, Queensland, Victoria and Tasmania.
The impact is already being seen in JBS’s Australian operations, where the company has canceled today’s (Monday’s) entire beef and lamb kills across the nation.
Overseas, it is still early in the morning as this report is published, but it is anticipated that similar actions will happen in processing operations in North America, and potentially, South America from tomorrow. Monday is a Memorial Day holiday in the US, which may help the company’s North American operations buy some time to find solutions.
JBS Australia chief executive officer Brent Eastwood confirmed the cyberattack and the immediate impact on the company’s Australian operations. He was unable to say how long the Australian stoppage might last.
An IT consultant said that history suggested large businesses were often impacted for a week or more by such cyber-attacks before normal operations could resume.
While JBS is still assessing the impact of the damage and what it means to the business, there is no evidence at this stage that the attack has been motivated by animal or environmental activism. There has been a sequence of cyberattacks directed at large corporate entities of all types over the past few months.
JBS Australia said it was unable to speculate about a resumption to processing operations in Australia, saying the first priority was to assess the impact and extent of the attack.
However, it said processing operations would be impossible without normal access to IT and internet systems. The impact has already filtered back to JBS’s meat sales and lot feeding operations, with incoming feeder cattle unable to be inducted without access to IT systems, Beef Central understands. JBS’s Primo Smallgoods business in Queensland has also been impacted.
Australian red meat processors spend enormous sums of money on electronic cybersecurity. Companies like Deloitte and EY are frequently used as consultants to try to find ‘cracks’ in some companies’ IT networks, but as this example shows, cyber-attack remains a threat to corporate and smaller businesses of all types, despite such precautions.
JBS’s IT division resources around the world were working on the hack, but at this point was unable to provide detail until more was known.
Source: Beef Central, Sydney Morning Herald