Veterinary services provider CVS Group on Monday informed UK regulators that it had been experiencing operational disruptions following a cyberattack.
The event, the company said, involved unauthorized access to “a limited number of its IT systems” that were taken offline as part of the incident response plan.
“Our responses to contain the threat of malicious activity have caused considerable operational disruption over the past week, but to date have been effective in preventing further external access to CVS systems,” the company said in a notice to the London Stock Exchange.
CVS Group also noted that it engaged with third-party specialists to investigate the nature and extent of the attack, and that it “proactively informed the relevant authorities,” as personal information might have been compromised.
“Whilst the prompt actions taken by the Group have limited the cyber incident, they have resulted in disruption to UK operations,” CVS Group said.
According to the company, most of its practices continued to provide clinical care to clients and patients throughout the disruption, and business functions and services at its practices have been restored across most locations.
“However, due to the increased levels of security and monitoring, some systems are not working as efficiently as previously and this is likely to result in an ongoing operational impact,” the company said.
The cyberattack, CVS said, did not affect its operations outside the UK, nor third-party hosted systems or the group’s ecommerce systems.
Additionally, the incident prompted CVS to accelerate its plans to migrate its IT infrastructure to the cloud, to improve service security and operational efficiency.
“Whilst we will continue to focus on providing high levels of clinical care to clients and patients, the security steps taken and the planned migration of our operational systems are likely to have an impact on operations for a number of weeks,” the company said.
CVS also noted that it would provide additional information on the incident as its forensic analysis advances.
CVS Group operates more than 500 locations in the UK, Australia, the Netherlands, and the Republic of Ireland, and has over 9,000 employees. A vast majority of its veterinary practices are in the UK.
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