World’s Largest Books Distributor Baker & Taylor Hit with Ransomware Attack

Following a ransomware attack a week ago, Backer & Taylor, the world’s largest supplier of books to global libraries, acknowledged that it is still attempting to restore impacted systems.

The server went down as a result of the cyber attack, systems and applications such as phone systems at offices and service centers were all affected by the outage, according to the Twitter Backer & Taylor posted on August 23.

The 190-year-old library services provider disclosed a day later that the internet attack would lead to disruptions to its mission-critical systems for the rest of the week while IT teams worked to restore affected servers.

In the statement, Backer & Taylor said that it fell victim to the hacker’s attack unfortunately amid increasing cyber security threats and it has engaged a third party to solve the issue.

"We want to take this opportunity to thank you again for your continued patience and cooperation as we deal with the service disruption we’ve been experiencing. We know that it has been frustrating, and we appreciate your ongoing understanding, " the business updated yesterday.

And they will keep users updated and look forward to getting back to business as usual as soon as they can, the statement reads.

At present, there is no information available regarding the ransomware group or source responsible for the attack.

Based in North Carolina, U.S., Baker & Taylor provides sales/distribution of books to over 5,000 academic and public libraries.

Ransomware attacks that permanently damage a company's services and infrastructure are getting increasingly frequent. Service downtime stemming from that can be disastrous for firms with loss of user trust and ensuing financial hit, customers influenced by personal information leakage from the data breach, and laid off employees. While working tirelessly to restore system functionality, security teams worry about the next possible ransomware attack.

The mindset should be shifted from mitigation to prevention to stop such cyber threats before hackers breach the network and cause the failure of systems and services, noted Justin Vaughan-Brown, VP of market insight at Deep Instinct.

To get there, a full-blown data protection plan is a must, which covers internal and external safety walls including IT infrastructure strengthening, awareness raising, and BCDR (disaster recovery and business continuity) strategy.

IT infrastructure strengthening:

This consists of a variety of defensive measures ranging from:

1)     Constant updates on software and applications.

2)     Periodical change of strong passwords with combinations of alphanumeric codes and special symbols for different systems.

3)     Firewall installation.

4)     Limited access privileges.

5)     Multi-factor authentication.

6)     Website and application visit whitelist.

Awareness raising:

1)     Employee: Staff training on how to recognize phishing attacks and other cyberattacks and appropriate measures.

2)     IT staff: Regular checkups on the system to find out hidden risks; systems updates and patches; response plan for cyber attacks.

3)     Management: Prioritize data security and invest in it.

BCDR strategy:

1)     Overall assessment of security gaps.

2)     Maintain backups at fixed periods.

3)     Professional team to establish, maintain, and improve the plan.

4)     Regular tests.

Vinchin Backup & Recovery keeps fast and easy backups for 10+ virtualizations with CBT, settable backup schedules, mail alerts, and other advanced strategies; secures those backups with anti-ransomware backup storage protection that denies unauthorized visits, and performs instant recovery to get the VM backup in 15s for seamless business continuity.

To back up, manage and migrate your data in one software, all you need to do is download the 60-day free trial solution and give it a try.