Cyber-attack Disrupts Printing of Major Newspapers

The attack was a computer malware attack that targeted the infrastructure of Los Angeles Times. The focus of the malware was the organization’s network, specifically the one that Tribune Publishing uses for printing purpose.  Tribune publishing and Los Angeles Times share the same printing networks owned by the former. The malware might have been a kind of ransom-ware that normally scrambles the files and programs of a computer before the attackers demand for a payment from the victim in order to unscramble them.

 The attackers somehow managed to penetrate the system of the organization, to the extent that each market across the firm was affected. However, the attackers did not manage to access or get data from the company. In addition, the news organizations for online editions were not affected, while no subscriber data was compromised by the attack.  However, the attack was preventing the transmission of information from various offices in Southern California to the respective printing presses. The attack hampered the entire process of the organization, in that the some copies of newspapers were delivered late from the Los Angeles printing plant.

The attack on the organization brings to light two important issues that can be learnt. Firstly, successful or unsuccessful attacks come with risks that may include infrastructure damage, disruptions of system operations, and lose of resources. Secondly, the security in the system may prevent attackers from intruding but fail to raise alarm that an attack has occurred or has been attempted. In order to prevent such an attack, it is important to have a network security that has complete awareness, and thus, it can ferret out any attacker. The system exercise of network awareness ability needs time, resources and expertise and the capacity to intelligently evade information overload (Monte, 2015). The implementation of the system will ensure awareness of any attack is raised.

References

Monte, M. (2015). Network attacks and exploitation: A framework. John Wiley & Son. 67-69