Production at the U.S. operations of Fairlife LLC, Coca-Cola’s dairy operation, have been temporarily suspended because of a cyberattack, Coca-Cola announced yesterday (July 16). Fairlife’s Canada production operations are not currently impacted.
Coca-Cola did not share a lot of details but said the dairy unit “identified unauthorized access by a third party to a portion of its systems, including its production-related systems, in connection with a ransomware event.
“After detecting the issue, the company promptly activated its incident response and business continuity protocols. The company’s investigation and assessment of the impact of the incident is ongoing, with the assistance of outside advisors and cybersecurity experts. The company has also notified law enforcement.”
Fairlife appears to have production operations in Goodyear, Ariz., Coopersville, Mich., and Webster, N.Y.
Coca-Cola said the full scope, nature and impacts of the incident are not yet known, but the parent firm assured that product quality and safety have not been impacted. “The company is working diligently to complete the investigation and restore the systems and impacted operations.”
It’s been a while since we reported a cybersecurity incident. There were several to hit food & beverage companies early this decade. We did a cover story on the subject, “How Cybercriminals Break Into Food & Beverage Plants,” in March 2022. You can search for more recent stories on our website.