‘Majority’ of Fairlife Operations Are Back Following Cyberattack

Coca-Cola says it’s making “significant progress” in restoring Fairlife operations after ransomware disruption.

Coca-Cola Co. on July 27 said its Fairlife dairy company had resumed the majority of production at its four facilities in the U.S., following this month’s shutdown following a cyberattack.

Coke described the ransomware event as “access by an unauthorized third party to a portion of the company’s systems and taking of certain data [resulting in] a temporary suspension of production operations. The company continues working diligently to restore impacted systems and operations.”

Coca-Cola has not mentioned if it paid any ransom. But it did say the retail availability of Fairlife products has been largely unimpacted, “due to the availability of existing inventory. Product quality and safety have not been impacted.”

The ransomware attack apparently happened July 15 or 16. Coca-Cola announced it had halted production at Fairlife's U.S. facilities as a precaution; the unit’s Canada operations were not affected.

“Based on the information currently available, the company believes the incident has not had, and is not reasonably likely to have, a material impact on the company’s financial condition or results of operations.”

Reuters news service reported the hacking gang Anubis claimed credit on July 21 for the incident. The group made the claim on its dark web site, saying it had stolen 1 terabyte of data from Fairlife, and it threatened to publish the stolen data unless it received an unspecified ransom. Coca-Cola did not comment on the Reuters story.

About the Author

Dave Fusaro

Editor in Chief

Dave Fusaro has served as editor in chief of Food Processing magazine since 2003. Dave has 30 years experience in food & beverage industry journalism and has won several national ASBPE writing awards for his Food Processing stories. Dave has been interviewed on CNN, quoted in national newspapers and he authored a 200-page market research report on the milk industry. Formerly an award-winning newspaper reporter who specialized in business writing, he holds a BA in journalism from Marquette University. Prior to joining Food Processing, Dave was Editor-In-Chief of Dairy Foods and was Managing Editor of Prepared Foods.

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