The Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute has been the victim of a cybersecurity “incident,” the organization told Alaska Public Media.
ASMI Executive Director Jeremy Woodrow told Alaska Public said the situation caused trouble for the organization, which is a public-private partnership between the state of Alaska and the Alaska seafood industry with the mission of supporting Alaska’s seafood industry and aiding it in its quest to be a competitive, market-driven food production industry.
According to Woodrow, ASMI was hit by a malicious web attack from a “nefarious third party” in August – but the effects of the incident were limited, though they took weeks to fully recover from.
“It was just some lost time of business,” Woodrow said. “It was a short-term blip that disrupted processes, but none that were not able to be corrected.”
As far as ASMI is aware, he said, there was no impact on the state’s fishing industry and that most of the institute’s sensitive data is stored on separate computer systems.
“The majority of the data we have is copyrighted photo and video files,” Woodrow said. “There’s not a lot you can do with that.”
ASMI is working with a Silicon Valley cybersecurity firm to firm up its web defenses and is drafting a report about the incident. Woodrow declined to reveal any details on the incident, and added that the report will likely remain confidential.
ASMI isn’t the first organization in the seafood industry to be hit by a cyberattack. AKVA Group announced in January it had been the victim of an attack that took down several of its key systems. The company later said that the attack took a USD 6 million (EUR 5.1 million) toll on the company’s finances.
Photo courtesy of jijomathaidesigners/Shutterstock
