United Natural Foods, a major U.S. food distributor, was forced to shut down some of its systems following a recent cyberattack. The Rhode Island-based company is North America’s largest publicly traded wholesale distributor and also a primary supplier for Whole Foods. UNFI operates fifty-three distribution centers, delivering various products to over 30,000 locations across the United States and also in Canada. In an SEC filing on Monday, the company disclosed that a cyberattack discovered on Thursday, June 5th, forced it to take systems offline. This action has unfortunately impacted its ability to fulfill and also to distribute important customer orders to many different food service locations.
The company has stated that it promptly activated its official incident response plan and also implemented various effective containment security measures. This included proactively taking certain critical systems offline, which has temporarily impacted the company’s ability to fulfill all of its customer orders. UNFI said the incident has caused, and is expected to continue to cause, temporary disruptions to its normal daily business operations. Since the security breach was first discovered, the large wholesale giant has notified all relevant law enforcement authorities about this security incident. They have also hired external cybersecurity experts to help them thoroughly investigate the entire incident and its full operational impact on them.
UNFI has also taken important measures to maintain its customer service continuity and has implemented various workarounds for certain affected operations. These specific business continuity plans will allow the company to continue servicing its many customers wherever it is currently possible. The company has not yet revealed the specific nature of the cyberattack or whether the attackers successfully stole any sensitive company data. Additionally, no known ransomware operations have yet claimed any responsibility for this particular breach against the major U.S. food distributor. This disclosure from the company follows many widespread reports that had appeared on social media since last Thursday regarding system outages.
This cyberattack on the company UNFI is just the latest security incident to hit a major company in the food industry. Cyberattacks and also ransomware incidents that are impacting the food and agriculture sector continue to be a major ongoing security concern. In addition to more recent attacks on large suppliers and various supermarket chains in the U.K., hundreds of U.S. stores were affected. A massive cyberattack on the Dutch conglomerate Ahold Delhaize USA ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday last year caused major disruptions. The 2021 ransomware attack on the food distributor JBS was also one of the most high-profile incidents to ever impact the industry.
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