The Coca-Cola Company has confirmed that dairy business fairlife has temporarily suspended production across its US operations after a ransomware attack resulted in unauthorised access to parts of its systems.
In a statement issued on Thursday (16 July), Coca-Cola said fairlife, LLC had identified unauthorised access by a third party to a portion of its IT infrastructure, including production-related systems.
The company said it immediately activated its incident response and business continuity protocols after detecting the attack and has launched an investigation with the support of external cybersecurity experts and advisers. Law enforcement agencies have also been notified.
The full scope and impact of the ransomware incident are still being assessed.
Coca-Cola stressed that the cyberattack has not affected the quality or safety of fairlife products.
"Product quality and safety have not been impacted," the company said. "However, as a result of the incident, production operations at fairlife in the United States are temporarily suspended."
The company added that fairlife's production operations in Canada continue to operate normally and have not been affected by the incident.
The Coca-Cola Company did not disclose when US production is expected to restart or whether the incident is expected to affect product availability.
The fairlife incident is the latest cyberattack to hit the global food industry. On Thursday, Japanese food manufacturer Ezaki Glico said it is seeing shipment delays following a cyberattack at its logistics partner that has already affected Kentucky Fried Chicken and Kura Sushi Inc, a large sushi chain.