DailyPost 2887
IT’S RAINING HACKS – NOW MICROCHIP TECHNOLOGY
Hacks have become so common that it does not get a mention in the mainstream media. It is your baby and hence you are supposed to manage it. Rest is between your customers and your regulators. There are a variety of ways by which a hack becomes public more often than if the user gets impacted or a service or more, comes to a standstill and the third and pretty common now is through the dark net display of the hacked / leaked data. At times one of the ransomware gangs simultaneously* take credit for the breach. Another way is when the information finds its way through to the public domain is by the mandatory SEC filings.
Given the mandatory nature of SEC filing; neither the filing in general can be avoided, nor the critical information in it, under any circumstance can be hidden. Non-declaration of such information could possibly turn out to be a much bigger issue. The hack in question today came to the public domain through this route. The company in question is Microchip Technology, where a hack was disclosed through a recent SEC filing. American chipmaker Microchip Technology disclosed that it was impacted by a cyber attack over the weekend, serious enough to disrupt operations across multiple manufacturing facilities.
The company has roughly 123,000 across multiple industry sectors. As a result of the attack manufacturing facilities operate at reduced capacity, impacting the much critical ability to meet the company’s order. In this case, as it would be in the case of any good company, it took steps to manage the situation. The actions taken also pertained to shutting down some systems and isolating the affected ones following the breach. When did it happen? It was on Aug 17, 2024 detected potentially suspicious activity involving IT systems. The company also made it known to SEC that it had started to assess, contain, and remediate the potentially unauthorized activity.
By 19th August, 2024, the company brought it to the public domain that an unauthorized party disrupted the use of certain servers and some business operations. The company is trying to evaluate, through cyber security experts, the nature and extent of this cyber attack. A desperate bid is being made to restore the affected IT systems and return to normal business operations. As the company investigation is ongoing, the full scope, nature and impact of the incident is not yet unknown. It has not yet been determined “whether the incident is reasonably likely to materially impact the company’s financial conditions or results of operations.”
BUT FOR THE MANDATED SEC FILINGS, LOTS MANY HACKS WOULD NOT HAVE COME TO LIGHT.
Sanjay Sahay
Have a nice evening.