JBS USA, the world’s largest meat supplier, says it was the target of an “organized cybersecurity attack.”
In a statement, JBS said the attack affected some of its servers supporting its North American and Australian IT systems.
“The company took immediate action, suspending all affected systems, notifying authorities and activating the company’s global network of IT professionals and third-party experts to resolve the situation,” the company said in its statement. “The company’s backup servers were not affected, and it is actively working with an Incident Response firm to restore its systems as soon as possible.”
The shutdowns impacted all nine beef plants, located in Arizona, Texas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wisconsin, Utah, Michigan and Pennsylvania, according to officials from the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) International Union, which represents more than 25,000 JBS employees. JBS’s US-based pork plants are still operational.
The shuttered plants produce nearly one-quarter of U.S. beef supplies. In total, JBS employs more than 66,000 workers across 84 US-based locations.
on Tuesday, JBS USA and Pilgrim’s announced progress in resolving cyberattack. JBS says ,Operations in Mexico and the UK were not impacted and are conducting business as normal.
“JBS USA and Pilgrim’s are a critical part of the food supply chain and we recognize our responsibility to our team members, producers and consumers to resume operations as soon as possible,” said Andre Nogueira, JBS USA CEO. “Our systems are coming back online and we are not sparing any resources to fight this threat. We have cybersecurity plans in place to address these types of issues and we are successfully executing those plans. Given the progress our IT professionals and plant teams have made in the last 24 hours, the vast majority of our beef, pork, poultry and prepared foods plants will be operational tomorrow.”
“In the U.S. today, JBS USA and Pilgrim’s were able to ship product from nearly all of its facilities to supply customers”, JBS USA said in the statement. “The company also continues to make progress in resuming plant operations in the U.S. and Australia. Several of the company’s pork, poultry and prepared foods plants were operational today and its Canada beef facility resumed production”.
“I want to personally thank the White House, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Australian and Canadian governments for their assistance over the last two days,” Nogueira added.
The company is not aware of any evidence at this time that any customer, supplier or employee data has been compromised, JBS said.
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