Downtime, Lost Profits and Remediation Costs Reach $52 Million for Norsk Hydro
The Norwegian aluminum maker, Norsk Hydro, is still suffering the aftermath of a ransomware attack that riddled its networks early last month. The ransomware variant, LockerGoga, initially infiltrated the company’s networks through their Active Directory. This allowed for the malicious software to quickly spread among the company’s endpoints.
Since this is a newer version of ransomware, LockerGoga was able to bypass the security solution Norsk Hydro had in place. Fortunately, their detection and response process was rather effective, resulting in minimal interruption to daily operations and consumer deliveries. However, this doesn’t mean the company has been left unimpacted. Select production lines have suffered a 20 to 30 percent decrease in productivity. In just a matter of days, this has cost the company millions in lost revenues.
To date, the cyber attack has cost Norsk Hydro a total of 350 million Norwegian crowns, or $52 million USD. A bulk of these funds are lost revenues from the decrease in production; however, there are also additional costs factored in as well, including the remediation efforts and IT and security costs.
Company officials have yet to disclose a projected timeline for operations to return to full capacity. Although, total costs are expected to continue to rise due to the approximate 25% decrease in production.
As a result, the company has postponed its first quarter earnings report an additional five weeks to June 5, 2019. Norsk Hydro has confirmed a cyber security insurance policy should help cover the cost of the attack.
