How Eye Security and a Belgian logistics company handled a cyber attack
With over 350 vehicles and more than 700 employees, this family-run logistics business has been in operation for over 50 years, with many branches in Belgium and more across Europe.
Like many businesses, it depends on its IT infrastructure, built almost entirely in-house. One Saturday morning, strange things began happening to the company’s servers. They had fallen victim to a cyber attack in the form of ransomware – by far the biggest cyber threat to logistics companies worldwide.
They turned to Eye Security for help. Within hours, two Incident Responders were on site, rebuilding systems and rolling out security software before bringing the business back online.
Eye Security’s cyber experts determined that the business’ former external IT partner had made a wrong configuration in its firewalls, enabling the attack.
The first systems were back online in days, but “the 150-plus links to customers, suppliers, and partners were still closed to the internal systems, as was the internet,” recalls the CEO. The company reconnected all external sites one by one, while vetting and taking security measures.
Eye Security was able to reassure the business that the attackers had not captured any data to resell. The attack still cost the company a staggering 1.3 million euros (much of which was fortunately covered by its cyber insurance). It was almost a year before the business was fully operational again – now with fortified IT infrastructure.
“This connects our customer to our 24/7 Security Operations Centre (SOC) and allows us to intervene immediately should another attack occur,” says Masson.
“Cybersecurity is never finished… It will always be a process.”
The most important lesson, says the CEO, is that cybersecurity is never finished. ‘Today, we remain constantly alert. Is the entire infrastructure secure? Are employees trained on how to recognise phishing? Have we missed any critical patches? It’s a process.’
They received additional advice from Eye Security, benefiting from their local knowledge. As Anne Masson, CEO of Eye Security Belgium, says: “We are able to solve large-scale challenges with personal attention and to the full satisfaction of our customers [...] We know the Belgian market inside out. We advise Belgian companies on process improvements to make their infrastructure more secure, and what solutions they can deploy to be sufficiently secure in the future.”
Meanwhile, Eye Security has rolled out its Cyber Guard solution across its customer’s systems, using Managed Extended Detection & Response technology (mXDR) combined with cloud detection.
