Lion has today provided an update on the cyber attack which has proven to be ransomware targeting its computer systems.

The brewer said there was no indication thus far that information was taken in the attack, but said that recovering its systems was taking longer than expected, affecting suppliers and customers.

Earlier this week an expert from UNSW Canberra said a ransomware attack was the most likely option.

Articles published under the media release byline are news produced by the relevant business and remain unedited by Brews News. This media release was circulated by Lion.

Below is a further update on the cyber-attack and IT system outage that Lion is experiencing.

Our investigations to date have shown that a system outage has been caused by ransomware. The ransomware targeted our computer systems. In response, we immediately shut down key systems as a precaution.

Our IT teams and expert cyber advisors are working around the clock, investigating the issue and assessing how long the impacts will continue. 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.

Current impact on Lion’s operations

Our teams are working as hard as they can to service customers and suppliers, implementing new manual processes and investigating all alternative options. We recognise this is imperfect and is causing disruption to our valued partners. We also recognise this is happening at an unfortunate time as we emerge from COVID-19 restrictions.

Lion Australia and New Zealand

Throughout the COVID-19 shutdown, we were able to continue to brew beer safely. We had stock at hand and were gearing up to increase brewing. This attack has delayed those plans, and because of the situation we have limited visibility of our products. We’re working to bring our breweries back online as soon as possible. In the meantime, we will be managing our stock levels very closely and may see some temporary shortages.

We apologise in advance to our customers and consumers and ask for their patience as we do what we can to get back to normal supply levels.

Lion Dairy & Drinks

In the Dairy & Drinks business, some parts of customer service continue to be impacted and some of our manufacturing sites remain offline. Unfortunately, due to the nature of fresh dairy and juice products we are experiencing some service misses across our customer channels.

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. We appreciate the patience and support of our customers, network partners, suppliers and consumers. There has been no impact to the collection of milk from our dairy farmer partners or fruit from our orange growers.

Update on our recovery efforts

We had been hoping to have full access restored by now, but unfortunately this process is taking longer than we hoped.

There is no evidence that any of the information contained in our system (including financial or personal information) has been affected but this is something that we will review closely as we continue to investigate the incident.

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.

Next steps

We are working hard to resolve this incident as quickly as we can so we can return to full production and get our products flowing back into the market.

We will continue to provide regular updates on this webpage.