Another major pharmacy chain shuts following possible cyberattack

Canadian retail pharmacy chain London Drugs experienced a cyber-incident which forced the company to temporarily shut down its stores across Western Canada.

On Sunday night, the company published a short update on X, saying it “experienced an operational issue”. 

“Pharmacists are standing by to support with urgent pharmacy needs,” the tweet reads. “We advise customers to phone their local store’s pharmacy to make arrangements.” Headquartered in Richmond, Canada, the company operates at least 78 stores across the country. 

Forensic experts brought in

Usually, companies would shut down its systems and services if attacked by ransomware in an attempt to stop attackers from exfiltrating sensitive data. In this case, London Drugs is yet to confirm the nature of the incident, but told CBC that it shut down its shops “out of an abundance of caution”. 

“At this time, we have no reason to believe that customer or employee data has been impacted,” the company told CBC News in a statement late on Sunday.

Following the discovery of the incident, the company brought in third-party forensic experts to investigate and help mitigate the issue.

“We want to assure you that this incident is the utmost priority for us,” the company said in its statement.

Due to the sensitivity of the customer data they hold, healthcare organizations are a major target for cybercriminals. Earlier this year, Change Healthcare confirmed suffering a major attack which crippled its operations and even affected local pharmacies. At the time of the incident (late February this year), local media in some US states reported pharmacies experiencing outages and some firms being unable to process prescriptions through patient insurance. 

The company ended up paying more than $20 million in ransom, in exchange for the data which it never received. So far no hacking groups claimed responsibility for the attack.

Via CBC News

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