Taylors Wines comes under cyber attack

Already suffering from Chinese tariffs, Australian winemaker says its systems have been crippled by a ‘professional’ cyberattack.

Taylors Wines managing director Mitchell Taylor. Picture:

South Australian winemaker Taylors Wines is the latest Australian business to come under cyber attack, saying its computer servers have been hacked to bring down emails, destroy passwords and freeze its IT systems.

The cyber attack is another blow following the Clare Valley winemaker’s loss of its

booming export business to China because of Beijing’s tariffs.

Taylors Wines chief executive Mitchell Taylor told The Australian his computer servers were attacked on Monday morning. IT teams trying to solve the issue said it was the work of a professional hacker.

At this stage there had been no demand for a ransom from the hacker.

The targeting of the third generation winemaker, with a history in the Clare Valley stretching back to the 1950s, comes after a series of recent attacks including one which disrupted the Nine Network on Sunday. Parliament House and Victoria’s Eastern Health hospital network have also been hit.

Mr Taylor said the cyber attack had come at a particularly bad time, just before the Easter rush, and following punishing tariffs which have destroyed a key export market to China.

“It happened in the early hours of the morning,” Mr Taylor told The Australian.

“We haven’t had any notification of a ransom at this stage and we are in the process of retrieving all the emails … all emails are down, we have to reissue all our passwords on our server and we have had to talk to third party logistics suppliers to make sure our orders are still done, we will have to do those in a manual system now.”

The crippling disruption comes at a busy time for the winemaker.

“It is a busy stage now for us, at the end of Easter with orders and we are checking with the team to make sure we get all of these orders listed and then we will have to manually do them and process them at a later stage.”

Winemakers like Taylors Wines have also seen exports to China eliminated by the 200 per cent-plus tariffs implemented by the Chinese government in late November and now set in place for five years.

Mr Taylor said Taylors Wines had built up a strong market in China before the tariffs were announced and was building good momentum in the region, But the tariffs, seen as part of a trade dispute between Canberra and Beijing, had wrecked that.

“We haven’t sold a case of wine to China since October.”

Originally published as Taylors Wines comes under cyber attack