Garmin Confirms Cyber-Attack
- Paul Thurrott
- Jul 28, 2020
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After several days of uncertainty, Garmin this week conceded that it was the victim of a cyber-attack but said that no user data had been stolen. The firm never uses the word “ransomware,” but it’s pretty clear that that was the point of the attack.
“Garmin announced it was the victim of a cyber-attack that encrypted some of our systems on July 23, 2020,” the firm explains in a press release. “As a result, many of our online services were interrupted including website functions, customer support, customer facing applications, and company communications. We immediately began to assess the nature of the attack and started remediation. We have no indication that any customer data, including payment information from Garmin Pay, was accessed, lost or stolen. Additionally, the functionality of Garmin products was not affected, other than the ability to access online services.”
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Since connecting to online services is the functionality of most Garmin products, the firm’s customers are understandably upset about the downtime, which now looks to stretch up to the one-week mark: Garmin now says that it expects “to return to normal operation over the next few days.” But the issues could continue even beyond that, thanks to a backlog of information it will need to process.