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Essent Working To Rebuild After Encryption Attack

The business management platform has been able to get many of its supplier and distributor customers back online, but is still in the process of restoring ancillary services.

Weeks after an “encryption attack” that disrupted its network and communication systems, Essent Corporation said it has restored much of its operations and is working “to assure a safe and secure recovery” to the rest of its services.

cyber threat

In a statement, Essent noted that it worked over Thanksgiving and the holiday weekend “to launch our rebuilt production environment and begin the process of migrating customer installations from our recovery servers back to our production network.”

The company continued: “The Essent Commerce Cloud and Essent OrderTrax Network are back into production.” It’s also working with customers “on the controlled launch of ancillary services.”

The business management platform was the victim on Nov. 4 of an encryption attack, a type of ransomware attack that locks users out of their important files and asks for a ransom to decrypt them. A number of suppliers and distributors in the promotional products industry were affected by the service disruption.

Canadian supplier DML Creation (asi/48031), for example, lost its website and ERP software, “everything including our client lists, AR, AP, orders, POs, all financials” after the ransomware hack on Essent, according to a public Facebook post by Ron De Moor, DML co-founder and president. He noted that Essent was able to recoup all its data. And DML noted on its social media channels that as of Nov. 18, the supplier’s ERP was back up and running and its front office was fully functional.

Another supplier that uses Essent for order processing said they’re still struggling to function efficiently after the attack.

“We’re drowning here,” a supplier executive, who wished to remain anonymous, told ASI Media. “What they’ve gotten up allows us to operate at 65% to 70% of what we need, which allowed us to kind of catch up, but everything takes more time. … What used to take two minutes now takes eight. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but it does add up.”

Essent said in a statement released a few days after the Nov. 4 attack that it had “engaged outside experts” to assist with recovery and determine the scope of the impact. Essent is a cloud provider of fully integrated ERP, business process automation, e-commerce and network communications for businesses.

Cyberattacks have been on the rise in recent years, and the promo products market has not been immune, with entities that range from Top 40 suppliers to mom-and-pop shops getting hacked. Ransomware damages are expected to exceed $30 billion worldwide next year, according to InfoSecurity. Many firms have invested in cybersecurity insurance, despite rising premiums for the service, calling it a “necessary evil.”