Baker & Taylor’s Systems Remain Offline a Week After Ransomware Attack

A server outage has impacted library services company Baker & Taylor’s systems and applications, said the firm on Twitter on August 23, 2022. A day later, the firm confirmed it engaged outside third-party experts to fix the issue.

Baker & Taylor’s systems remained offline the following week, and on Monday, the company made an announcement on its website, confirming it was hit by a ransomware attack.

“Our team has been working around the clock to return to normal operations,” reads a message on Baker & Taylor’s website. “Our priority has been remediating our systems and ensuring they are sanitized.”

The library services provider also said that, as soon as its systems are sanitized, it will proceed to restore them, bring them back online, and return to operations in a phased approach. 

“We expect disruptions to continue this week but are hopeful we can provide timelines for individual systems and applications as the week progresses.”

According to Justin Vaughan-Brown, VP of market insight at Deep Instinct, it has become more common to see ransomware attacks causing long-term disruption to businesses’ services and systems.

“Clearly, our current approach towards cybersecurity is not right,” Vaughan-Brown told Infosecurity Magazine.

“Downtime in services can be disastrous for a business, with it potentially affecting both customers and partners, which ultimately can lead to a loss of trust among users, and the enterprise taking a big financial hit. More worryingly, however, is the impact it can have on employees.”

Further, the executive said that in scenarios like this, security teams work relentlessly to get systems running again while also fearing the next potential ransomware attack.

“By shifting the mindset of security teams from mitigation to prevention, organizations can stop ransomware attacks before they breach the network and cause the downfall of systems and services,” Vaughan-Brown said.

“Libraries are a place of calmness and tranquillity; with a prevention-first approach, organizations can try and do the exact same with cybersecurity.”

The ransomware attack comes amidst a surge of similar threats targeting organizations around the world.