Cognizant Lost Rs 550 Crore In 3 Months Due To Maze Ransomware Attack; Several Clients Suspended Services

One of America’s leading multinational corporations, Cognizant, has been attacked by a ransomware called Maze, which has led to the company incurring a huge loss.

As per reports, the company’s losses include a huge dent in the revenues and corresponding margins by $50-$70 million.

Find out more details right here!

Maze Ransomware To Cost Cognizant $50-$70 million in Q2 2020

Brian Humphries, the CEO of Cognizant and CFO Karen McLoughlin revealed details of the attack, stating that the attack will cost the company a loss of about $50 million to $70 million in lost revenue and margin for Q2, 2020. 

As per reports, the ransomware attack managed to encrypt a few of the company’s internal systems and disabled them as well. After this Cognizant took the other systems offline and many of the company’s clients suspended the access to Cognizant’s networks.

This disruption caused by the attack has suspended all the work from home operations going on by VDI and the provisioning of WFH laptops. 

The CEO confirmed that the company has dealt with the attack by mobilizing the entire leadership team and also banked on the expertise of IT and security teams. The company also employed in leading cybersecurity experts to investigate the attack and deal with it. In fact, the company also reported the attack to appropriate law enforcement agencies.

Cognizant To Face Losses That Will Continue To Q2 

Brian revealed, “We proactively provided clients with Indicators of Compromise or so called IOC, namely forensic data that a company can use to identify potentially malicious activity and defend against attacks from external actors.”

He also said that as the ransomware attack is now under control, the company has restored VDI in automated laptop provisioning. “Further, with previously ordered equipment now physically in India and distribution constraints less respective per the latest state directives, we’re now substantially work-from-home enabled.”

Apparently, the company expects that this attack will heavily dent a majority of revenue and margin impact in the coming quarter. However, the attack will also reflect beyond Q2, because of the ongoing remediation costs that will be borne by the company.