UK shipbroker Clarksons refuses to pay hackers ransom for stolen data

London-based shipbroking firm Clarksons has suffered a data breach and refuses to pay the attackers to prevent the stolen data from being publicly released.

About the Clarksons data breach

“Our initial investigations have shown the unauthorised access was gained via a single and isolated user account which has now been disabled,” the company shared in a notice published on Wednesday, and warned that “the person or persons behind the incident may release some data.”

The company said that they will be contacting potentially clients and individuals directly in the coming days.

They did not disclose any further information about the cybersecurity incident as the investigation is still ongoing, so it’s currently unknown what type od sta has been compromised.

“As you would rightly expect, we’re working closely with specialist police teams and data security experts to do all we can to best understand the incident and what we can do to protect our clients now and in the future. We hope that, in time, we can share the lessons learned with our clients to help stop them from becoming victims themselves,” Clarksons CEO Andi Case noted.

“In the meantime, I hope our clients understand that we would not be held to ransom by criminals, and I would like to sincerely apologise for any concern this incident may have understandably raised.”

The fallout

Since the discovery of the incident, the company has put in place additional security measures to prevent future similar accidents. “The Company is continuing with a wider review of cyber security that began earlier this year and is, for example, accelerating the roll-out of various additional IT security measures,” they added.

Since the publishing of the notice, there has been no news about the stolen data being leaked.

Despite the company saying that the incident has not affected its ability to do business, shares in Clarksons fell by more than 3.5% after the breach announcement.