United Natural Foods, a North American grocery wholesaler, reported a cyber incident on June 5 that affected operations, including customer order fulfillment. The company implemented its incident response plan, taking several systems offline to contain unauthorized network activity. It is collaborating with third-party cybersecurity experts to address the situation and has notified law enforcement. Although the disruption is significant, it underscores the real-world implications of cyber threats on essential services like food distribution, reminiscent of recent incidents affecting grocery retailers.
In a Monday filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the health food distribution giant said it "activated its incident response plan and implemented containment measures, including proactively taking certain systems offline," after uncovering unauthorized network activity on its IT systems on June 5.
United Natural Foods is not a household name, but it provides natural and organic products to more than 30,000 retailers across the US and Canada, including Whole Foods, Amazon, Target, and Walmart, and reported $8.2 billion in net sales in its fiscal Q2, which ended February 1.
The incident has caused, and is expected to continue to cause, temporary disruptions to the Company's business operations, the Form 8-K continued. "The Company is working actively to assess, mitigate, and remediate the incident with the assistance of third-party cybersecurity professionals and has notified law enforcement."
This incident is yet another reminder of how cyberthreats can cause real-world pain, including disruptions to the food supply and delivery systems.
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