Little Creatures back to brewing after cyber attack causes eight-day shutdown, in latest local cyber scare

Yet another Geelong business has been hit by a cyber attack, with a major local brewery finally back up and running after being forced to halt beer production for more than a week.

YET another Geelong business has been hit by a cyber attack, with Little Creatures Brewery forced to halt beer production for more than a week after a ransomware attack on its parent company.

It is the fourth attack to impact major Geelong organisations and businesses over the past 12 months, with one cyber security expert warning “this is the new normal”.

Little Creatures Brewery – which produces Furphy, Little Creatures and White Rabbit branded beers – resumed brewing, kegging and bottling on Tuesday, after systems were taken offline on June 9.

Hackers have targeted local businesses.

The company is owned by food and beverage giant Lion, which shut down its key IT systems “as a precaution” after being targeted by the ransomware attack.

Lion declined to say what level of beer production was impacted in Geelong, but a statement from the company this week said beer shortages were expected across the business.

“The latest impacts include a number of temporary shortages or out-of-stocks across both packaged (bottle/can) and keg brands,” the statement said.

“Across our Australian and New Zealand adult beverages businesses, we continue to have limited visibility of our products in our systems. We’re working to bring our breweries back online as soon as possible, hoping to get a number of our breweries back up and running very soon.

“We apologise to our consumers and customers, especially those who are only just getting their own venues back up and running following COVID-19 closures.”

Little Creatures is now the fourth local business to be hit by cyber attack since April last year.

Geelong Port was hit when an employee’s email account was hacked in April 2019, potentially exposing sensitive details of hundreds of customers, including information that could be used to commit serious identity thefts.

Barwon Health was then the victim of a ransomware attack in late September, which blocked access to IT systems at multiple regional public health services. It took about two months for Barwon Health’s systems to be fully restored.

And, in May, the City of Greater Geelong became the city’s next victim, when it pulled down its website after a malware attack. The city this month said there had been “no evidence of a data breach” as a result of the attack.

Geelong-based director of the RMIT University Centre for Cyber Security Research and Innovation Matt Warren said cyber attacks were becoming increasingly successful.

“It is the new normal,” Mr Warren said.

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FORMER MYOTHERAPIST ACCUSED OF SEXUAL MISCONDUCT“It’s not that there’s an increase in cyber-attacks, but we’re seeing these attacks be more successful because what they’re focusing on is the human aspect.

“It also highlights that organisations aren’t prepared for it.

“It’s actually a relatively easy cyber attack to recover from, but the problem is because organisations have now become complex, they haven’t kept up their backup resilience strategy to reflect their operations.”

Originally published as Little Creatures back to brewing after cyber attack causes eight-day shutdown, in latest local cyber scare