Ransomware attack to cost Sopra Steria millions

French IT services firm reveals recent Ryuk attack has blown a hole in its operating margin

Sopra Steria has revealed that a recent cyberattack on its systems will cost it as much as €50m as it moves to assure customers that it has nearly recovered from the breach.

The firm announced on 21 October that it was breeched by an unknown version of Ryuk ransomware, a strain of the virus which zeroes in on enterprises, encrypting PCs, storage and data centres en masse.

Sopra Steria claims that the attack was "rapidly blocked thanks to in-house IT and cybersecurity teams".

But the French firm claims that it expects the attack to have a gross negative impact on its operating income of between €40m and €50m, explaining that its insurance policy only covers cyber risks of up to €30m.

The IT services firm went on to reassure customers that it was not aware of any leaked data or damage caused to end user infrastructure.

"The secure remediation plan launched on 26 October is nearly complete," it said in a statement.

"Access has progressively been restored to workstations, R&D and production servers, and in-house tools and applications. Customer connections have also been gradually restored."

It went on to claim that, while it does not expect sales activity for its Q4 to be significantly affected by the "event", it has nevertheless downgraded its FY2020 forecast.

It is now predicting organic revenue to decline between 4.5 and 5 per cent, as opposed to an earlier forecast of between 2 and 4 per cent.

Fellow French service partner Umanis, has also hit the headlines this month for being targeted by a cyber-attack.