Isentia enters trading halt following urgent cybersecurity incident
Isentia Group this morning announced it had entered a trading halt pending the release of a major announcement. The Group will be on halt until the announcement, or until Tuesday 3 November.
The announcement comes shortly after the Group announced it was investigating a cybersecurity incident of an urgent nature, which disrupted services within its software as a service (SaaS) platform, Mediaportal.
The Group has confirmed the announcement is relevant to the cybersecurity incident, but has not provided any more information.
The media monitoring giant, which operates in eight markets, has “most government departments and large corporations” as clients and engaged external cybersecurity specialists to deal with the attack earlier this week.
According to reporting from Guardian Australia, the company was dealing with a ransomware attack, meaning its systems had been encrypted by an external party who demands payment in return for its release.
The attack specifically hit Mediaportal, which provides clients, including government organisations, with media data. It’s understood that the Isentia employees as well as users of the service were unable to access data during the attack.
CEO Ed Harrison said at the time of the attack that the company was doing everything it could, including working with the Australian Cyber Sercurity Centre.
“Isentia is taking urgent steps to contain the incident and conduct a full investigation into what happened and to avoid a repeat occurrence in the future,” Harrison told the ASX.
“Our priority is to restore full service as soon as possible but until that occurs, we have put processes in place to support our customers.”
An announcement is expected to come from Isentia shortly.
