from MARIA MACHARIA in Nairobi, Kenya
Kenya Bureau
NAIROBI, (CAJ News) – KENYA’S largest supermarket chain, Naivas, is reeling from a ransom ware attack by an online criminal organisation.
The ransom ware perpetrator is targeting corporates and organisations in and outside the East African country.
Naivas reported the intrusion by the threat actor might have compromised some of its data but it has contained this attack, and its systems are secure and operations are normal.
The threat actor has reportedly claimed to have stolen some of the data and is alleging that this may be published in due course.
“We and law enforcement agencies are monitoring this closely,” said Willy Kimani, Chief Commercial Officer of Naivas.
In a note made available to CAJ News Africa, he disclosed Naivas had also informed the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner Kenya of this incident.
On becoming aware of the attack, Naivas took immediate steps to prevent external access and engaged leading cyber security experts, CrowdStrike, to ensure system integrity.
“This process is complete and our systems are secure,” Kimani assured.
“We are cooperating with the relevant law enforcement agencies, as they investigate this and the many current ransom attacks in Kenya,” Kimani said.
Naivas assured that it did not hold any credit card/debit card information on its systems, and that such payment information was handled securely and protected through Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption.
Kimani said Naivas took the protection of personal information “very seriously.”
“Please accept our deepest apologies for the worry and inconvenience that this criminal activity may cause,” Kimani said.
Nivas has over 80 outlets.
According to Kaspersky, Kenya, alongside other economic powerhouses Nigeria and South Africa, are the countries worst targeted by cyber criminals in Africa.
In 2018, numerous firms in Kenya came under attack by a so-called WannaCry virus.
– CAJ News