Cyber Attack and Business Continuity Incident Examples

Hackers & fraudsters have deployed techniques that trick AI based phishing defence by obfuscating trigger words,  that bypass AI analysis and appear benign to human email recipients. Source: gbhackers 

A cyberattack is causing service issues for a global pharmaceutical and healthcare technology organisation. Hackers have  exfiltrated customer data from oncology and surgical business units. Source: The Record

Employee email accounts hijacked at a charitable organisation and used to faciliate fraudulent payments. Source: AOL

Nation state espionage suspected as the primary objective of a phishing campaign targeting tax system. Source: CRN

The Berlin government has received a $2.3 miilion ransom demand following a cyber attack from the crimminal group, Rhysida. Source: Anadolu Ajansı

A report from Google’s Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) highlights a a voice phishing (vishing) campaign which is targeting financial firms. Source: Knowbe4

Ainancial services organisation in Madhya Pradesh, India has announced that it has been hit by a ramsomware attack. The Krybit group has claimd responsibility for the attack. Source: DeXpose

Cyber attack on 3 major UK airports results in data theft affecting 8.7 minllion individuals. Early indications imply Data including email addresses, phone numbers, vehicle registrations and postcodes has been seized. Source: Sky News

Several small business on industrial estate suffer total loss of commercial premises and inability to operate following grass fires. Source: BBC 

Global medical giant, Boston Scientific confirm that it has suffered a significant cyber attack. Global supply and logistics are currently impaired.A timeline for full operational  restoration is not yet confirmed. Source: Medical Device Network

Users at major investment management company targetted by a phishing attack aimed at compromising user credentials. Source: Tech Market View

Chesapeake city warns of email fraud impersonating the planning department demanding payment for services. Source: Yahoo News

Phishing attack targets crypto currency investors with QR codes used for identity compromise. Source: Coin Edition

A UK power plant was shut down for 4 days following following a cyber attack allegedly launches by a hostile nation state, Source: BBC 

The Law Society of Scotland has alerted its members to a phishing campaign that compromise legal firms' mailboxes, sending messages  directly from the solicitor’s mailbox, including the firm's genuine signature block applied automatically by their signature management. Combined with a valid sender address bypasses automated chesks annd makes visual identification. Source: Law Society of Scotland

The UK is has been identified as the EU country most frequently targetted for cyber attacks. Consyruction is partucularly vulnerable. Report highlights sevral attacks in the sector. Source: Howden

Cyber security firm, ProofPoint  has advised of an active phishing attack targetting taxpayers and finance teams in Australia. Source: Security Brief

Data allegedly stolen directly from the Azure tenants of several Fortune 500 organizations is reportedly on sale on the dark web. The perpetrator has claimed that the data was exfiltrated from Azure/Entra instances via leaked credentials. Source: Security Week

Warehouse collapses following major fire. The warehouse belongs to to Premier Labellers and is understood to have contained cardboard boxes, forklifts, and labelling machinery Source: Yahoo News

Around 100,000 homes, businesses & government services are without power across  Hawaii, Honolulu & Maui following hurricane Lala. Source: CNN

French taxpayers data stolen by hackers. The  ⁠General Direction of Public Finances - the french tax authority has announced that the data of ⁠678,000 individuals was stolen. Source: Reuters

Information Comminssioners Office highlights security failures that enabled data breach at the Crimminal records Office. In their report the ICO said "failed to maintain an effective patch management process, and did not adequately investigate security alerts that could have identified the hacker’s activity earlier", adding that network segmentation reduced the scale of the attack. Source: Local Govenment Lawyer

Yorkshire's Brain Tumour Charity (YBTC) has been identified as one of the charity organisations affected by the Beacon CRM data breach. The charity has advised beneficiaries and donors to be "particularly cautious about unexpected emails, calls or text messages referring to YBTC, Beacon, donations or support you may have received" Source: BBC

More organisations report potential impact from Beacon CRM cyber attack. Museums including Foundling Museum, London; Sheffield's National Videogame Museum, York Museums Trust, the Paul Mellon Centre; UP Projects &English National Ballet are among the arts organisations affected. Charities have been to told to “assume that all data that you store in Beacon, including attachment files, has been accessed”. Source: Museums Association

Company employees tricked by impersonating CEO in fake gift card fraud. (Article contains some useful screen shots). Source: NDTV

Southampton charities Southampton Hospitals Charity & Saints Foundation have been identified as two of the many charities targeted in a cyber-security incident linked to a customer relationship management technology provider. Source: Daily Echo

The City of Pittsburg made an unauthorized ACH payment of $913,839.81 to a fraudulent bank account after scammers impersonated a known vendor. Source: Yahoo News

Cyber criminals have been identified  using malicious files disguised as 'Statement of Account', 'RBI' or 'MCA' to infect both Windows computers and hijack active WhatsApp Web sessions. Financial organisations and professionals are the primary target. Source: New Indian Express

A cyber crimminal organisation is utargetting financial organisations using social engineering and vishing techniques to acquire logon credentials: Source: Cyber Press

Meta has confirmed that one of its AI models was able to break out of a test environment  and penetrate another organisations systems - emphasising the need for robust containment of test environments. Source: BBC

John Hopkins MyJH portal subjected to phishing & "ghost" site attacks. The portal provides access to highly sensitive employee information including salary, benefits, and personal profiles. Source: John Hopkins website

Data from Arts and Cultural organisations leaked following a cyber attack on their CRM servicesprovider. English National Ballet among the organisations impacted by the attack. Source: The Standard

Repeated attacks on US water utilities and government sites point to nation state involvement Source: BBC

A cyberattack accesed the data of some 31,000 people contained in the principality's register of economic interests. The register contains details of people behind companies and foundations registered in principality and underpins anti-maoey laundering activities. Source: AP News

A cyber attack of the police national legal database (PNLD), contact details of 100,000 police officers were leaked to the !dark web". Source: Daily Telegraph

A wave of yber attacks has targetted water compnaies in both  Wisconsin & Minnesota. the objective of the attack was to compromise water management systems and the culrpits are suspected to be suspected to be faciltated by hostime nations states, Source: CNN

West Norfolk Council became the target of a cyber attack during local elections.  Although no data theft or comprimise was detectted, web and telephony services were suspended for several hours with full IT systems availbility retored after 24 hours. Souce: BBC

A cyber attack on the UK Department of Education has resulted in the exfiltration of 607,000 records, including email addresses and telephone numbers. The hacking gang, ExfilSquad has claimed responsibility and demanding a ransom. Source: The Guardian

The accidental cyber attack caused by the Open AI agent breaching has affected at least one other organisation. It has been established that the agent was "in the wild" for around 4 days and hit a cloud service provider as well as Hugging Face. Source: Politico

24/07/2026: A fire on a farm & industrial unit  in Essex spread to a fertiliser store causing a major explosion heard from miles aroound the site. The fire & explosion caused significant damage to commercial premises at the site. destroying workplaces, equipment and inventory. Restricted site access & road closures remain in place nearly a week after, Source: BBC

Hackers discovered using hotel Wi-Fi gateways to acquire user credentials. Wi-Fi routers are compromised to redirect users to fake Microsoft 365 login pages to steal log-in credentials: Source: Security Affairs

Edinburgh based Health Tech suffers significant cyber attack involving data breach. A statement issued by the company  said "A percentage of Craneware employee data as well as a subset of customer and partner records have been accessed and exfiltrated.". Source: Yahoo Finance 

OpenAI cyber security testing "escapes" test environment, launches live attack on start-up. Source: BBC

Persistent technical failures interrupt the operation of Malaysia's recently deployed Corporate Registry System (CRS),has severely disrupted business registrations, statutory filings, financing activities, share transactions, corporate restructuring and investment activities nationwide. Source: The Star

Ecopetrol , the Colombian state ‌energy company disclosed a cyberattack that resulted in the theft of data related to approximately 3,300 user accounts and that the breach could result in a "material adverse" financial impact. Source: Reuters

Abbott Laboratories investigates two cyber incidents on its internal systems at its cancer diagnostics business and its ‌LabCentral portal. Although operations have not been affected. The company continues to investigate the extent of the breach. Source: Yahoo Finance

Ernst & Young suffered a data breach facilitated by the compromise of a third-party support ticket system used by its IT personnel.

Support tickets submitted through the platform could have included documents containing client tax information.Source: Bleeping Computer

A ransomware cyberattack forces milk brand Fairlife to pause production in its U.S. operation following a confirmed cyber breached of the company's systems. Source: ABC News

An oversight during a systems upgrade caused a 12 hours outage in the Australian Telstra communications network. Customers lost mobile network access, trains were disrupted, ratil payment systems were unavailable and emergency services calls were "dropped". Source:BBC News

Major frozen food supplier hit by cyber attack Source:Japan Today

Microbursts cause significant damage to commercial and residential properties. Many business were forced to find   alternative workplaces while rebuilds and repairs were performed. As of 15/07/2026 emergency services were still an "incident stabilisation" situation, implying significant operational impairment for affected organisations. Source:AccuWeather

A server migration and software update led to a major failure of the interface and licensing software required to access the central servers. The functioning of all Berlin’s ordinary courts and regional courts,were severely restricted or brought to a complete halt.  Paper-only procedures were required to maintain case progression. 

Performance & login issues  persisted for several days. Source: Ground News

A building roof collapse in Leicester city centre  affected several nearby businesses, suspending deliveries and rendering commercial premises & contents inaccesible for several days while full structural surveys were undertaken Source:Leicester Mercury Update: access restrictions remain for 10 days while safety works undertaken   Update 2 Access to property re-established 31st July - 18 days after incident