Hearing Aid Maker Demant Loses $ 95 Million due to Ransomware Attack

Demant, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of hearing aids, expects losses of up to $ 95 million from an ransomware attack.

Apparently, this is one of the largest incidents of this kind, including NotPetya attacks, which caused companies like FedEx and the sea carrier Maersk to suffer hundreds of millions of dollars in losses; as well as a recent attack on aluminum producer Norsk Hydro, estimated at $ 70 million.

Demant’s problems began in early September. In a short message posted on the website, the company said it was shutting down its entire internal infrastructure after some critical incident involving a cybercriminal attack.

“The cyber-crime has had a significant impact on our ability to generate the growth we expected for the second half-year, and even though our commercial operations are doing their utmost to make up for the impact of the incident, we are in a situation where we cannot execute on our ambitious commercial growth activities to the planned extent”, — say in Demant.

Judging by the data of the Danish media, the incident was a racketeering attack, and the company’s infrastructure suffered. After data leaks, companies usually recover within a few days, but Demant has not recovered so far and is expected to take another two weeks.

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This is typical extortion attack. The fact is that, according to media reports, the incident affected the company’s ERP systems, production and transportation facilities in Poland, production and service centers in Mexico, production sites in France, Denmark and the entire Asia-Pacific region network.

The company has already announced the expected delays in the supply of products, as well as that experiencing problems with the acceptance of orders. Even worse, the availability of hearing aids in retail has suffered, and it is reported that “client clinics cannot regularly serve end users.

“Approximately half of the estimated lost sales relates to our hearing aid wholesale business. The incident has prevented us from executing our ambitious growth activities in some of the most important months of the year – particularly in the US, which is our biggest market”, — also report in Demant.

In their address to investors, Demant representatives said they expect losses to be between $ 80 and $ 95 million. The amount would be even higher, but the company expects to compensate $ 14.6 million due to insurance.