Amid reports of data breach at BigBasket, India’s second-largest drug maker Cipla Ltd has asked its IT team to be “paranoid" about its cybersecurity. The direction arrived after two large pharmaceutical firms, Dr Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd and Lupin, faced cyber attacks.
"We have not seen the kind of attacks that the other two companies you mentioned have faced in the recent past. But protection goes up. I have told my IT team to be as paranoid as possible and take the help of experts in this, and continue to track some hostile activities like conversations on the dark web, and multiple other things that one can do," LiveMint quoted Cipla CFO Kedar Upadhye as saying.
The pharma giant's CFO advised the employees on dos and dont's when it comes to operating on the internet. He also asked the employees to be extra cautious.
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Meanwhile, Cipla on November 7 posted a consolidated net profit of Rs 665 crore for July-September 2020. With this, the pharma firm's profit jumped by 41 percent year-on-year, and its consolidated operating margin rose by 266 basis points to 23.4 percent on account of the cost control. The firm said its consolidated revenue was up 15 percent at Rs 5,038 crore.
Earlier on November 5, Mumbai-based pharmaceutical firm Lupin had confirmed that it faced cyberattack on its servers, however, maintained that it did not have any impact on its operations. The firm, in the meanwhile, is conducting a thorough assessment.
Also, Hyderabad-based drugmaker Dr Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd's servers faced similar cyberattacks, following which it isolated all its data centre servers across the world temporarily as a preventive action. The attack was confirmed days after it received approval from Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) V.G. Somani to conduct clinical trials of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine.
