It’s been well documented that cyberattacks are on the rise and the pandemic has accelerated these nefarious activities. According to the FBI, cybercrimes have increased 300% since the pandemic began and it seems, at this point, that nobody is being spared… not even our beloved beer producers.
America’s second-largest brewer, Molson Coors, recently alerted investors to a cyber attack that resulted in a system outage so severe that the company put a temporary halt to its operations.
According to an SEC filing, the attack was significant enough to impact brewery operations, production, and shipments, and Molson Coors said it would be working with forensic IT firms and legal counsel as they continued their investigation of the incident.
The company also urged shareholders to carefully consider “the risks and uncertainties that cybersecurity incidents and operational disruptions to key facilities may have on the Company, its business and financial results.”
Food & Wine, in covering the incident, remarked that Molson Coors key rival – AB InBev – actually launched its own cybersecurity unit two years back, citing a growing number of digital threats. At the time, the company said it was already facing regular attacks that were either trying to force shutdowns or push the company to pay a ransom.
AB InBev’s cybersecurity office is located in Tel Aviv and is said to be focused on “discovering potential attacks against the company before they happen as well as analyzing any threats.”
