The Toronto Zoo released a statement in a news release Monday that they’ve experienced a ransomware attack. CBC reports that the Zoo made the announcement in light of an attack that was first detected last Friday. Zoo officials indicate that they are still investigating the extent of the attack, but say that it has no impacted employee or animal well-being.
This attack follows other cybersecurity breaches of provincial and municipal institutions, most recently that of the Toronto Public Library, which experienced a breach in October of last year and is still in the process of restoring full functionality to its web services. These breaches have alarmed cybersecurity experts, who warn of growing threats posed by hackers and scammers to those organizations with a large amount of sensitive health information, such as hospitals, several of which have also been attacked in 2023.
Cybersecurity experts urge all organizations to review their current network security policies, train their personnel on good security habits and invest in upgrading outdated infrastructure that may be vulnerable to such an attack.
