As much as we warn you about being prepared for a cyberattack, there’s nothing like a real-life example of how serious one can be – and the importance of being prepared.

Anyone who operates in and around the ports of Wilmington, Morehead City and Charlotte found out last week just how high the stakes are.

Cyberattackers hit the North Carolina State Ports Authority last week, disrupting IT systems at the three above-mentioned ports – forcing terminal operations into manual processing mode even as the Ports Authority immediately implemented an incident response plan.

There’s still a lot we don’t know, especially how the threat actors got access to the Ports Authority’s system, but what we do know suggests the preparation plan could have been stronger.

The official announcement didn’t reveal if any ransomware was involved or if any data was stolen. And it took until the end of the week for normal gate operations to resume.

It remains to be seen what the total impact will be on shipments and cargo tracking. So far the overall U.S. supply chain appears to be holding up fairly well from the disruption.

The fact that North Carolina’s ports took a few days to return to normal operations is likely an indication that their response plan – while ultimately effective – might not have contained all the elements it should have. So this can and should be a cautionary tale for everyone.

Just last week we blogged about Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS), which we offer so our customers can have the combination of automated recovery and the full attention of our professionals guiding the process.

The logistics industry is an interesting case here. On the whole, it was somewhat late to digitize, which means many are even further behind on the implementation of cybersecurity measures. The bad guys know that. They also know how high the stakes are if they can take out a major component of our supply chain.

And anyone in the industry can become a target. The industry is so interrelated that hackers can impact a great many companies by getting into the system of only one.

The North Carolina situation could have been a lot worse, and it would have been if they hadn’t already developed an incident response plan. But even the disruption of a few days probably imposed heavy costs on shippers and ocean carriers, which will have a ripple effect on the individuals and businesses buying the goods coming in and going out of those three ports.

It’s way too easy to point the finger at the North Carolina State Ports Authority. They could have been better prepared, but they probably were better prepared than most.

But you can and should be better prepared than that. Contact us today at 586.322.5000 so we can make sure you are.