Recent news has confirmed that Eurofins Scientific was targeted by a ransomware virus attack in June that led to a backlog of 15,000 samples, reduced from 20,000.

Mishcon de Reya’s cyber intelligence director Mark Tibbs commented, “Ransomware continues to be a problem for businesses as hackers have realised that targeting enterprises instead of individuals can result in greater rewards.

“In this case, it was not known if the hackers specifically targeted this organisation because they knew about the sensitivity and importance of the data that was being processed, or it was just chance.”

“Regardless, a case such as this underlines the need for companies processing sensitive data to employ appropriate security controls that ensure both the confidentiality and the ongoing availability of accurate data.

“While we do not know the exact details of this incident, most cyber-attacks such as this are either preventable or at least the impacts greatly mitigated through the appropriate technical and procedural measures.”