The disruption that disrupted McDonald’s services for several hours last Friday was ‘not directly’ caused by a cyber attack. The cause was an incorrect configuration change by an external provider. It is unclear exactly what the fast food chain means by ‘was not directly caused by a cybersecurity incident’.
Brian Rice, Global Chief Information Officer (CIO) at McDonald’s, confirms this in a company update .
Disruption paralyzes McDonald’s worldwide
It probably didn’t go unnoticed by many last week. On Friday morning, systems at McDonald’s branches worldwide were down for several hours, including in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Italy, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US. Due to the disruption, some branches were forced to close their doors. At other locations, people could order something to eat, but orders were written down on paper, and visitors had to pay in cash.
Around a quarter past nine Dutch time, McDonald’s reported that the malfunction had been resolved. At that time, the fast food seller could not say anything about the cause. A few days have now passed and we know more about the precise circumstances.
McDonald’s continues to analyze global disruption
CIO Brian Rice confirmed that the system outage occurred globally but was quickly identified and resolved. “This issue was not directly caused by a cybersecurity incident, but by an external provider during a configuration change,” he wrote in a statement.
He continues his story. “The reliability and stability of our technology are priorities, and I know how frustrating it can be when outages occur. I understand this impacts you, your restaurant teams and our customers. What has happened is an exception to the norm, and we are working with absolute urgency to resolve this.”
Although the outage is behind them, Rice says IT teams will continue to analyze the issue in the coming days and ensure that they and third-party vendors “take responsibility.” “We sincerely regret any inconvenience this has caused you, your teams and your customers. Thank you again for your patience and support as our teams worked tirelessly to resolve this issue,” Rice ended his statement.
What does McDonald’s mean by ‘not directly caused by a cyber attack’?
BleepingComputer asked McDonald’s what exactly is meant by ‘was not directly caused by a cybersecurity incident’. Was the POS software vendor attacked by hackers, leading to the global outage? Or is there possibly something else going on? To date, the tech site has not received a response.
More Articles Here
Follow Us Here