Lion warns of beer shortages after cyber attack

Drinks conglomerate Lion has warned it “may see some temporary shortages” of beer and other stock as key systems remain offline following a ransomware attack.

Source: Lion

Lion was forced to shut down a number of systems on Tuesday following a system outage found to have been caused by ransomware, resulting in a “limited visibility” of its products.

“We’re working to bring our breweries back online as soon as possible,” the company said in an update on Friday.

“In the meantime, we will be managing our stock levels very closely and may see some temporary shortages."

The company operates a number of popular beer brands including XXXX, Tooheys, and James Squire.

Lion’s Dairy & Drinks business is similarly affected, with additional “service misses” due to the challenges of producing and distributing fresh items like milk and juice.

“We are continuing to do all we can to ensure we can service the demand of our customers and have a team of people working with customers to assist with manual ordering and delivery,” it said.

Initial efforts to work around outages in the dairy sector accidentally resulted in calls for orders being sent to cyber security consultant Cliffside Security on Tuesday.

Lion added that the cyber attack hasn’t impacted the collection of milk or fruit from the farmers supplying its brands, which include Dare, Big M, Dairy Famers, Daily Juice and Berri.

While the restoration of systems is taking longer than first hoped, Lion has stressed that there is no evidence that any financial or personal information was compromised by the attackers.

“We have notified the authorities of the incident; and we will work alongside the relevant government authorities, law enforcement agencies and privacy regulators, as required.”

“Our focus is on bringing systems back online safely so we can resume our business as usual manufacturing, and customer services.

“This is taking some time, but it is necessary that we work through this properly.”