Crown Equipment

History

2024: Disabling all IT systems after cyber attack

At the end of June 2024, the world's largest forklift manufacturer Crown Equipment confirmed that in early June it had to shut down all IT systems after a cyber attack that disrupted production at factories.

Crown is one of the largest forklift manufacturers in the world, bringing together 24 manufacturing facilities at 14 locations around the world, employing 19,600 people. It is known that around June 8, the company was hacked, which led to the shutdown of all IT systems. Employees were told not to accept requests and to carefully check emails for fear of phishing emails. Due to the shutdown of IT systems, employees could not track their working hours, lost access to toolkit maintenance manuals, and were not even able to deliver equipment on time.

DigitalIceAge

Crown eventually confirmed it had been hit by a cyber attack: "We recognise that the situation has raised a lot of questions. We can now confirm that Crown's IT system has been hacked by an international cybercriminal organisation. We were forced to shut down operating systems so we could investigate and resolve the issue. As much as we wanted to resolve the incident as soon as possible, in this case it was important for us to hide information from hackers that they could use against us. "

The company said it was able to limit the amount of data that criminals gained access to. During the investigation, it turned out that hackers gained access to the company's IT system due to the negligence of one of the employees, who provided unauthorized access to his computer contrary to the company's policy. The company said it was continuing its investigation with support from the FBI and cybersecurity experts.^[1]

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