Canadian recreational vehicle maker BRP, Ontario Cannabis Store dealing with cyber attacks

One of the country’s biggest manufacturers of recreational vehicles is still struggling with the aftereffects of a cyber attack.

Quebec-based BRP Inc., better known as Bombardier Recreational Products, said Monday it had been hit by “malicious cybersecurity activity.”

This morning Biliana Necheva, the company’s senior media relations advisor, said it won’t give interviews with more details “until the situation is resolved.”

“At this time, we have mobilized our internal network of IT professionals and retained the services of cybersecurity experts to assist in securing our systems and support our internal investigation,” she said in an email.

UPDATE: On Thursday, Aug. 11th BRP said there’s been progress restoring some of its servers. It hopes to resume our Valcourt manufacturing operations on Monday, August 15th. However, the rest of its operations remain suspended temporarily, which may delay certain transactions with customers and suppliers.

BRP makes Ski-Doo and Lynx snowmobiles, Sea-Doo watercraft and Can-Am on and off-road vehicles.

When the company announced the attack Monday it said operations had been suspended temporarily, which may delay certain transactions with customers and suppliers.

BRP has manufacturing facilities in Canada, the United States, Mexico, Finland, Austria and Australia, with a total workforce of more than 20,000 people.

In March the company announced annual revenue of C$7.6 billion for the fiscal year ending January 31st, with a profit of $794 million.

Distribution partner attacked; OCS warehouse closed

Separately, the Ontario Cannabis Store (OCS), the Ontario Crown corporation that distributes marijuana products across the province to stores and sells them online, said Tuesday it still can’t fulfill or deliver new orders after a cyber incident at the U.S. parent company of its distribution partner, Domain Logistics. As a result of the incident OCS has had to close its warehouse.

Domain Logistics, based in Brampton, Ont., is a unit of Legacy Supply Chain of Indiana.

“Since the investigation began, we have been working urgently in lockstep with Domain to plan the steps necessary to clear the backlog of orders as quickly and efficiently as possible,” OCS said in a statement. “As part of this plan, OCS will focus on fulfilling orders for its wholesale customers first. Clarity on each store’s delivery schedule will be communicated once operations resume.

“The OCS continues to manually accept deliveries of inventory from licensed producers, which will only be entered into the system once Domain Logistics is operational. If required, OCS will reach out directly to licensed producers if adjustments need to be made on future inventory shipments.”

For its part, Legacy said in a statement that it detected unusual activity on its network on August 5th and immediately implemented the corporate protection protocol. This included taking the IT network and a number of applications offline and engaging external experts to investigate and remedy the situation. “Unfortunately, this is impacting our ability to conduct regular order processing for a small number of Legacy customers, and we apologize for any inconvenience. We hope to have our systems back online very soon,” the statement says.

“While the company maintains system connectivity with some clients to support shipping activities, the information it has access to is limited to end customers’ names and physical shipping address. The company does not have access to end customers’ personal financial data or credit card information. However, should the company’s investigation into this matter find evidence that personal or commercially sensitive data may have been illegally accessed, we will notify those affected immediately.”

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Jim Love, Chief Content Officer, IT World Canada

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Howard Solomon
Howard Solomon
Currently a freelance writer, I'm the former editor of ITWorldCanada.com and Computing Canada. An IT journalist since 1997, I've written for several of ITWC's sister publications including ITBusiness.ca and Computer Dealer News. Before that I was a staff reporter at the Calgary Herald and the Brampton (Ont.) Daily Times. I can be reached at hsolomon [@] soloreporter.com

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