Sopra Steria cyber attack costs to hit €50 million

IT services giant Sopra Steria has announced that last month’s cyber attack on its systems is likely to cost the company up to €50 million.

In an update published on its website, the NHS supplier admitted that the ransomware attack would negatively impact its gross operating margin by between €40 million (£35.6m) and €50 million (£44.5m).

The French company also revealed that its insurance coverage for cyber risks totals €30 million (£26.7m). IT Pro contacted its representatives about the details of the insurance coverage but is yet to hear back from the company.

Sopra Steria stated that the large costs of the cyber attack, a new variant of the infamous Ryuk ransomware, can be attributed to “the remediation and differing levels of unavailability of the various systems since 21 October”, the day when the incident was detected.

However, the IT services giant added that “sales activity for the fourth quarter should not be significantly affected by this event”.

“For financial year 2020, Sopra Steria expects to see negative organic revenue growth of between 4.5% and 5.0% (previously “between -2% and -4%”), an operating margin on business activity of around 6.5% (previously “between 6% and 7%”), and free cash flow of between €50 million and €100 million (previously “between €80m and €120m”),” it said.

Ryuk is a popular strain of malware which last month was reported to be targeting some 20 organisations a week as well as forcing a number of US hospitals offline. It is believed to have compromised Sopra Steria's Active Directory infrastructure and encrypted portions of the company's network.

However, according to the company, the attack was “rapidly blocked thanks to in-house IT and cyber security teams”.

“The measures implemented immediately made it possible to contain the virus to only a limited part of the Group’s infrastructure and to protect its customers and partners,” it added.

Sopra Steria also confirmed that the incident had not caused any further breach of data, saying that it had not identified “any leaked data or damage caused to its customers’ information systems”.

Since the cyber attack, the company has managed to restore access to its workstations, R&D and production servers, in-house tools and applications, as well as customer connections.