Garmin: The IT outage that affects financial results

Since last week, Garmin has been facing a computer outage that affects its operation.

The incident is due to a computer attack, which in some way has been mismanaged by the directors of the company and the resumption of activities always takes time.

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The company was the victim of a ransomware attack. Several computer systems of the latter have been controlled by cybercriminals, more singularly, the software that contains the data collected after the races and other physical training of users, i.e. the "Connect" app. The company's call centre and production system have also been affected by cyber criminals.

This incident poses a serious problem for Garmin. Indeed, the company is due to report its financial results on Wednesday. Customers on one side and associates on the other as well as Wall Street center do me have a better understanding of the current situation. The risk for the company is that its financial results are largely damaged, or even overshadowed by this incident.

And the clock is ticking fast as Garmin is due to report on his financial results on Wednesday. Customers will want answers, and Wall Street will certainly want more clarity. It is not impossible that Garmin's financial results will be overshadowed by this cyberattack.

Experts say the U.S. company has mishandled the crisis. Indeed from the beginning, she shut in an inexplicable silence and then made a brief post on Twitter. Last Saturday, Garmin published a Fair A Questions that did not address the broad outlines that were not of interest to the general public regarding the incident. It is noted that so far, some pages of Garmin are still down, especially that of Garmin Connect status.

"We are currently experiencing a failure affecting Garmin.com and Garmin Connect. This outage also affects our call centers, and we currently cannot receive any calls, emails or online chats. We are working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible and apologise for this inconvenience," the company said on its website.

In a sense, Garmin's computer attack may have a positive influence. The company will be able to take advantage of this experience to improve its security in particular, its defense protocols against ransomware for example, or the theft of data.

The researchers believe that the company was very lucky not to have suffered more severe damage. But next time, it's not sure she'll be able to do as well. And Garmin himself is aware of that. It says in its annual report outs and forth the security risks of the information it handles:

"We collect, store, process and use users' personal information and other data. Our users' personal information may include, among other things, names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, bank account information, height, weight, age, sex, heart rate, sleep habits, GPS location.

Due to the volume and types of personal information and data we manage and the nature of our products and applications, the security features of our platform and information systems are essential. If our security measures or applications are violated, disrupted or failed, unauthorized people may be able to access user data. If our third-party service providers, business partners or third-party applications with which our users choose to share their Garmin data or ourselves are to suffer a violation, disruption or failure of systems compromising our users' data or if the media suggests that our security measures or those of our third-party service providers were insufficient , our brand and reputation could be affected, the use of our products and services may decrease and we may be exposed to a risk of loss, litigation and regulatory process.

Depending on the nature of the compromised information, in the event of data breaches, disruption or other unauthorized access to our user data, we may also have an obligation to inform users of the incident and we may need to provide some form of redress for those affected by the incident. »

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