Cyber attack forces American cleaning products giant Clorox to switch to manual operations

American cleaning products giant Clorox said it suffered a cyber attack that forced it to take several systems offline.

In a recent 8-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Clorox said that it identified “unauthorised activity” in some of its internal systems and immediately launched an investigation, with assistance from third party cyber security experts, to understand the nature and scope of the incident.

“After becoming aware of the activity, the Company began taking steps to stop and remediate the activity, including taking certain systems offline,” the company said in its 8-K filing.

Clorox added that it is “working diligently” to respond to the cyber security incident. The company said it notified law enforcement agencies about the cyber security incident and is working with them to resolve the situation.

“While we are working diligently to respond to and address this issue, these systems will remain offline out of an abundance of caution, as we work to add additional protections and hardening measures to further secure them,” a Clorox spokesperson told BNN Bloomberg.

“To the extent possible, and in line with its business continuity plans, Clorox has implemented workarounds for certain offline operations in order to continue servicing its customers,” they added.

Clorox added that the security incident caused disruption to some of its business operations and the company expects more disruptions until it restores the affected systems completely.

Clorox is yet to state how the threat actors infiltrated its internal systems or whether any data was exfiltrated from its servers. The company, however, said that more details about the security incident will be shared as and when available.

“The investigation into the nature and scope of the incident remains ongoing and is in its very early stages. Our team is working diligently to restore systems safely and quickly, and we will ensure all suppliers and customers are updated as appropriate,” the Clorox spokesperson added.