Belgium's Zaventem-based aircraft part manufacturer, Asco, has confirmed that its global operations will be shut down due to cyber criminal attacks the company's servers faced recently.
As per the reports the company has stopped all operations in Zaventem as well as in other countries, including Germany, Canada and the US due to a major data breach that affected its security services. The company confirmed that about 1,000 of their 1,400 global employees were being sent home until Asco resumes its operations.
Meanwhile, Union representatives Jan Baetens told De Standaard that once the technical problems are restored, "we want to look together with management to see if they can't pay out a supplement to compensate the workers for their loss of earnings."
After the Asco cyber attack news became public, many reports suggested that it was a ransomware attack. Later, the Belgium company, which was taken over by US-based firm Spirit AeroSystems in 2018 stated that it was dealing with ransomware.
After identifying the data breach, the company immediately called in internal and external experts who are currently examining the data breach to find out the solution. They also clarified that as of now the authorities could not find evidence of the theft of information but they are taking the situation very seriously.
Even though such ransomware attacks usually result in demands for money, in this case, the aircraft part manufacturer, which is also connected to defence sector, could be the direct target by anonymous hackers as part of computer espionage, some experts said.
