CVS UK veterinary operations disrupted by cyberattack
Specialist third party consultants have been engaged to investigate the nature and extent of the incident and to support the response across the group
CVS Group has announced that it recently detected and intercepted a cyber incident which involved unauthorised external access to a limited number of its IT systems.
Upon discovery of the incident, CVS took immediate steps to isolate the issue and, to prevent wider unauthorised access, took its IT systems temporarily offline, as part of the group’s response plan.
The group stated that its responses to contain the threat of malicious activity have caused considerable operational disruption in the UK over the past week, but to date have been effective in preventing further external access to CVS systems.
Specialist third party consultants have been engaged to investigate the nature and extent of the incident and to support the response across the group. CVS has also proactively informed the relevant authorities, including the Information Commissioner’s Office, due to the risk of malicious access to personal information.
As a result of this incident, the group is accelerating its plans to migrate its practice management system and related IT infrastructure to the Cloud to both provide enhanced security across our estate and to deliver operational efficiencies.
The group will provide a further update in due course.
CVS said: “Through the efforts of our colleagues, we have continued to provide our usual high levels of clinical care to clients and patients at the majority of our practices. IT services to our practices and business functions have now been securely restored across the majority of the estate; however, due to the increased levels of security and monitoring, some systems are not working as efficiently as previously and are likely to have an impact on operations for a number of weeks. Operations outside the UK remain operationally unaffected as do non-CVS hosted systems and the Group’s e-commerce systems.
“The forensic analysis is ongoing and we will continue to take all necessary steps to protect our business. We would like to thank all our colleagues for their support and professionalism in maintaining our veterinary services throughout this incident.”
