Maple Leaf Foods’ Late-2022 Cyber Incident Cost ‘at Least’ $23 Million
In its recently released 2022 annual report, Canada’s Maple Leaf Foods said the cost of the widely reported Nov. 6, 2022, cyber incident “was at least $23 million.” Although there were business interruptions, “the company was able to maintain operations throughout the event.”
“Unfortunately, this incident had a much larger impact on our performance than we originally anticipated, despite the remarkable work our team did to continue with manual operations during the outage as we meticulously restored our systems,” Executive Chair and CEO Michael McCain wrote in the introduction to the annual report.
Later in the report, the company confirmed that it experienced a system outage stemming from the cyberattack. “Upon learning of the incident, Maple Leaf Foods took immediate action and engaged cybersecurity and recovery experts. The company executed its business continuity plans as it restored the impacted systems and worked with customers and suppliers to minimize service disruptions. While the company was able to maintain operations throughout the event, normal business activities were interrupted.”
The $23 million in special charges were taken during Maple Leaf’s fourth quarter. Previously, the company had not quantified the cost of the incident.
“Cybersecurity is an issue in which we have made a considerable investment and that we take very seriously,” the report continued. “Coming out of the cybersecurity incident, we are adding on to our investment and accelerating our work. We are, accordingly, updating our materiality assessment.”
