Coca-Cola's Fairlife – The Ransomware Attack That Stopped the Milk

This week's global deep-dive is about ransomware you can see on a supermarket shelf. On 16 July, Coca-Cola disclosed in a formal SEC filing that its billion-dollar dairy subsidiary Fairlife had been hit by a ransomware event that reached production-related systems — and that all US production of Fairlife products had been temporarily suspended, while Canadian lines kept running. No criminal group has claimed the attack, and whether data was stolen or a ransom demanded remains unknown. We use the incident to unpack the difference between IT and OT — office systems versus the systems that run machines — why ransomware that touches the factory floor is measured in stopped lines rather than encrypted files, what Coca-Cola's fast, formal disclosure got right, and how any business that makes, moves or sells physical things should think about segmentation, continuity and the "can we run without the computers?" question.Could your operations keep moving if ransomware reached the systems that run them? Visit www.kinsoft.com.au to talk through your security and IT needs.Sources: SEC 8-K filing (Coca-Cola); BleepingComputer; TechCrunch; Help Net Security.