Some Kronos Customers Face Payroll, Scheduling Disruptions From Hack

A ransomware assault on HR management computer software company Supreme Kronos Team could knock offline for months the cloud-centered options that customers use to control payroll and worker scheduling.

UKG has disclosed it became knowledgeable on December 11 of “unusual activity” influencing its Kronos Non-public Cloud service and had established it was a ransomware incident. Kronos Non-public Cloud consists of such solutions as UKG Workforce Central, UKG TeleStaff, Health care Extensions, and Banking Scheduling Solutions.

‘Given that it may possibly just take up to many months to restore system availability, we strongly recommend that you evaluate and put into practice option small business continuity protocols related to the affected UKG options,” the corporation advised customers.

Products that are not housed in the Kronos Non-public Cloud, including UKG Professional, UKG Completely ready, and UKG Proportions, ended up not affected by the hack.

The Boston Globe reported that “HR departments ended up scrambling to obtain means to report employees’ several hours worked and make certain they received compensated. In some scenarios that intended returning to pen and paper.”

“This assault drives household the require to not only have, but also to exercise, catastrophe-restoration and continuity-of-operations designs that can be enacted quickly and efficiently,” Erich Kron, a safety awareness advocate at KnowBe4, advised Threatpost.

“The more intensely reliant organizations are on technical solutions, even people in the cloud, the more significant it gets to have a system to function without these solutions, even for a shorter time,” he reported.

Supreme Kronos was shaped very last calendar year when Lowell, Mass.-centered Kronos, a pioneer in on the net payroll and scheduling solutions, merged with its Florida rival, Supreme Software, in a $22 billion deal.

Its do the job management computer software is employed by dozens of big organizations, area governments, and enterprises, including the Metropolis of Cleveland, Tesla, Temple College, Clemson College, U.K. supermarket chain Sainsburys, and New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

The Metropolis of Cleveland reported UKG advised them and other clients that the ransomware assault may possibly have compromised worker data like names, addresses, social safety figures, and worker IDs.

Even if UKG decides to pay out the ransom, Allan Liska, an intelligence analyst at cybersecurity organization Recorded Long run, reported it can just take days to negotiate a settlement with the attackers and set together the dollars.

Kronos Non-public Cloud, ransomware, computer software, Supreme Kronos Team, workforce management