Powertech, a subsidiary of BC Hydro, says it experienced a cyber-attack on February 4.
The incident was detected promptly and the impact was contained, Powertech says.
A wholly owned subsidiary of BC Hydro, Powertech Labs supports electrical utilities, equipment manufacturers, and automotive industries.
“We have determined that some servers were encrypted and some data was copied to a cloud location. The exact type of data is still being determined.”
Only a limited number of customers were affected and will be notified, the company said.
“Our email systems do not appear to have been impacted but have been temporarily taken offline out of an abundance of caution,” the company added.
The British Columbia Utilities Commission (BCUC), which regulates BC Hydro, says it considers cyber risk a significant threat to all regulated entities in British Columbia.
BCUC said the likelihood of a successful cyberattack is increasing.
BCUC said it expects all regulated entities to mitigate cyber exposure and establish a plan to respond effectively if a cyber attack happens.
Nash_Dj says
Likely much simpler explanation what happened:
– One of their workers surfed the internet, clicked on compromised site and activated ransomware…
– The other, perhaps a bit more serious, version is that an email with ransomware, or phishing link arrived through their weak Exchange email server and some employee opened it.
Those 2 ways are how majority of the companies get infected (ransomware encrypts the servers). Hakers have likely never seen nor entered their system…
– The third possibility is an internal job, by disgruntled employee…
Nothing to see here, keep going. Just for public drama for their own protection. They made it up like they were under the attack… All companies do that way to take off the public shame.
(The author of this comment is a professional cyber security and computers expert)