Kronos Private Cloud, a Massachusetts based payroll company, was subjected to a ransomware attack last week, disrupting most of its accounting servers; leaving many workers without their regular paychecks and bonuses for this Christmas 2021 season.
Kronos, a business unit of software giant Ultimate Kronos Group (UKG) issued a clarity on the situation and stated that none of its customers or clients will be affected by the malware attack, as its incident response plan was well in place and has been launched in time as a backup to record paycheck processing as per the work attendance related information.
A certain section of media is however unsure of what UKG’s IT Staff were arguing and started publishing posts that workers who were working for big companies like Tesla, GameStop, Honda, Whole Foods, Sainsbury, Puma, YMCA, MGM Resorts, NY Metro Transit Authority might find a delay in their paychecks process.
Keeping aside the pay check n bonuses issue, the concerning part of this incident is that prima facie launched by Kronos Private Cloud has discovered that the hackers who targeted the IT infrastructure of the company have accessed some of the critical data such as names, addresses, partial social security numbers and other contact details.
So, it is going to be a herculean task for the software services provider to come out of the incident, as there is a high possibility that the data watchdog will impose a penalty on the company for causing inconvenience to its clients and failing to protect its customer/client data if/when proved. And there is a high possibility that hackers can use the stolen details in phishing or identity theft related attacks.
