Commercial insurer CNA on Tuesday announced that it was recently targeted in what it described as a sophisticated cyberattack.
The Chicago, Illinois-based company is one of the largest commercial insurers in the United States, offering cyber insurance policies alongside a broad range of other insurance products.
In a March 23 announcement, the company revealed that, over the weekend, it fell victim to a cyberattack that impacted certain systems, and which resulted in network disruptions.
“On March 21, 2021, CNA determined that it sustained a sophisticated cybersecurity attack. The attack caused a network disruption and impacted certain CNA systems, including corporate email,” the company says in an incident notification on its website.
The insurance giant says that it has started an investigation immediately after learning of the attack, to determine the full scope of the incident. The investigation is ongoing and law enforcement has been alerted.
“Out of an abundance of caution, we have disconnected our systems from our network, which continue to function,” CNA also says.
The company also revealed that employees were notified of the attack, and that they were “provided workarounds where possible,” so that they would be able to continue operating.
CNA has yet to determine whether any information related to its clients or other type of data has been impacted in the incident.
“The security of our data and that of our insureds’ and other stakeholders is of the utmost importance to us. Should we determine that this incident impacted our insureds’ or policyholders’ data, we’ll notify those parties directly,” the company notes.
While CNA hasn’t revealed the nature of the cyber-attack, there is a possibility that the company fell victim to ransomware operators, which would explain why systems were disconnected from the network (likely to prevent further data encryption).
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Ionut Arghire is an international correspondent for SecurityWeek.
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