When Cognizant announces Q2 2020 results on July 29, it's a reasonable bet CEO Brian Humphries and CFO Karen McLoughlin will offer a status update on the IT consulting firm's ransomware attack recovery costs.
Indeed, Cognizant suffered a Maze ransomware attack in late April 2020. The attack will cost the global systems integrator and MSP roughly $50 million to $70 million in lost revenue and margin for Q2, 2020, Cognizant said in May 2020.
Related Update, July 28, 2020: Cognizant acquires New Signature, a Microsoft Azure Expert MSP.
Cognizant: Initial Ransomware Attack Recovery Cost Estimates
In that May 2020 statement, Cognizant said the ransomware attack will negatively impact Q2 results for two reasons.
- First, the attack encrypted some of the IT consulting firm’s internal systems, effectively disabling them, and Cognizant proactively took other systems offline. The disruption impacted work-from-home enablement such as VDI and the provisioning of WFH laptops.
- Second, some clients opted to suspend Cognizant’s access to their networks. Billing was therefore impacted for a period of time, yet the cost of staffing those projects remained on Cognizant’s books.
Fast forward to Cognizant's July 29 earnings announcement, and it's reasonable to assume that the MSP will seek to provide a financial update on the attack -- and hopefully put the incident behind the company.
Hackers, Ransomware Continue to Target MSPs
The U.S. Secret Service recently warned IT service providers and consulting firms about ongoing cyberattacks. The warning indicated that threat actors are increasingly targeting point-of-sale (POS) systems and performing business email compromise (BEC) and ransomware attacks.
Recent MSP and IT consulting ransomware attack victims include:
- xChanging, a DXC Technology subsidiary.
- Collabera, an IT staffing firm;
- Orange Business Services, a major telecom service provider and Top 200 MSSP; and
- Telecom SA, the largest telecom company in Argentina.
How MSPs Can Mitigate Ransomware Attack Risks: To safeguard your MSP business and clientele from ransomware attacks, follow this tip sheet.
