The Dr Reddy's Laboratories pharmaceutical company, which was just given a green light to begin trials of Russia's Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19 in India, said on Wednesday that its IT systems had been attacked by hackers earlier in the month, possibly resulting in a breach of personal data
NEW DELHI (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 28th October, 2020) The Dr Reddy's Laboratories pharmaceutical company, which was just given a green light to begin trials of Russia's Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19 in India, said on Wednesday that its IT systems had been attacked by hackers earlier in the month, possibly resulting in a breach of personal data.
"On 22nd October 2020, we experienced an information security incident and consequently isolated the impacted IT services. This incident involved a ransom-ware attack. We promptly engaged leading outside cybersecurity experts, launched a comprehensive containment and remediation effort and investigation to address the incident," the company said in a report on its latest consolidated financial results.
The company's internal investigation has not yet established if the breach of data due to the cyberattack included any personally identifiable information, according to the report.
"Recovery and restoration of all applications and data is underway. All critical operations are being enabled in a controlled manner," the company said.
The cyberattack occurred less than a week since the Indian authorities approved the launch of Sputnik V's phase 2 and phase 3 clinical trials in India. On August 11, Sputnik V became the world's first officially registered coronavirus vaccine.
Aside from the Russian vaccine, India is already underway with clinical trials of three other vaccines. This includes the ChAdOx1 vaccine by the University of Oxford, the Covaxin vaccine by the Bharat Biotech company and the ZycovD vaccine by the Zydus Cadila company.
