Baker & Taylor, a venerable distributor of books, video and music products to libraries, institutions and retailers, has been hit by a ransomware attack that disabled its critical systems and applications.
The hijackers took down the Charlotte, North Carolina-based firm’s product ordering system, phones, service centers and electronic data exchange system. At this point, the perpetrators' identities are not known. The company, which announced the extortion on August 23, 2022, is still struggling to return to normal operation.
Company Hires Outside Experts
Management said in a Twitter post that it has hired outside third-party security experts to assist internal teams with restoring the company’s systems. So far, no word has surfaced of ransom demands either from the cyber crooks or Baker & Taylor.
In an August 30, 2022 statement posted on its website, Baker & Taylor said:
“Thank you again for your patience, kind words, and partnership as we recover from last week’s ransomware attack. Our team has been working around the clock to return to normal operations. Our priority has been remediating our systems and ensuring they are sanitized. As that work is completed, our focus is transitioning to restoration, bringing our systems online, and returning to operations in a phased approach. We expect disruptions to continue this week but are hopeful we can provide timelines for individual systems and applications as the week progresses. Thank you for your understanding.”
Officials pledged to provide updates as relevant information became available.
About Baker & Taylor
The privately-held Baker & Taylor, which was founded in 1828, has some 36,000 customers in more than 120 countries and ships more than one million unique products annually. It maintains roughly 385,000 titles in inventory and another 1.5 million titles available to order.
In November, 2021, Follett Corp, which had owned Baker & Taylor since 2016, sold off its interests to a private investment group led by Amandeep Kochar, who previously served as general manager and executive vice president of Baker & Taylor.
