CVS Group Share News (CVSG)

(Sharecast News) - Vet services provider CVS Group said on Monday that it had been hit by a cyber attack which will have an ongoing operational impact on its UK business.

The incident involved unauthorised external access to a limited number of the company's IT systems. CVS said it took immediate steps to isolate the issue and prevent wider unauthorised access, and took its IT systems temporarily offline.

"Our responses to contain the threat of malicious activity have caused considerable operational disruption over the past week, but to date have been effective in preventing further external access to CVS systems," it said.

Specialist third party consultants have been engaged to investigate the nature and extent of the incident and to support the response across the group.

"Whilst the prompt actions taken by the group have limited the cyber incident, they have resulted in disruption to UK operations," CVS said.

"Through the efforts of our colleagues, we have continued to provide our usual high levels of clinical care to clients and patients at the majority of our practices. IT services to our practices and business functions have now been securely restored across the majority of the estate; however, due to the increased levels of security and monitoring, some systems are not working as efficiently as previously and this is likely to result in an ongoing operational impact."

CVS said operations outside the UK remain unaffected, as do non-CVS hosted systems and the e-commerce systems.

"Whilst we will continue to focus on providing high levels of clinical care to clients and patients, the security steps taken and the planned migration of our operational systems are likely to have an impact on operations for a number of weeks," it said.