Eurofins Scientific: Cyber Attack

The UK’s biggest forensics service, Eurofins Scientific was hit by a ransomware virus in June, as a result ceasing their collaboration with the British police.

Eurofins carries out work for the police forces across the UK including DNA testing, firearms testing, toxicology analysis and computer forensics and deals with over 70,000 criminal cases a year.

The ransomware attack stated by the BBC had caused a backlog of 20,000 samples which the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) is now clearing. This backlog included blood samples and DNA specimens.

The BBC learnt last month that Eurofins actually paid the ransom to the attackers to restore their computer access to the network.

Kaspersky principal security researcher, David Emm, stated that to avoid another attack like this, organisations must have offline and offsite back-ups of data. The most effective mitigation to ransomware and malware in general is to have a backup plan and process that is both effective and efficient. This eliminates the situations where organisations like Eurofins need to negotiate with cyber criminals.

Currently the National Crime Agency is still investigating the attack.