Cyberattacks Hit European Wind Energy Companies, Three Fall Victims to the Hacks

Three German-based wind power companies fell victim to a wave of cyberattacks during the war between Russia and Ukraine, shutting down thousands of turbines.

Enercon GmbH was the first German wind turbine manufacturer to bear its brunt on 24 February. Its satellite communications services were disrupted causing damage to some 5,800 wind turbines in Central Europe, with 10 gigawatts of electricity is enough to power 7.5 million homes that have lost connections, although operations continue in automatic mode.

Nordex, another wind turbine manufacturer, was forced to shut down its computer systems after being attacked by cybercriminals on March 31 over Russian oil and gas.

The latest incident involves Deutsche Windtechnik, a German wind turbine maintenance and repair company, which said in a statement on April 11 and 12 that its computer systems were the target of a cyberattack and they are definitely dead for the time being. Fortunately, the company was able to recover most of the encrypted servers from the malware, but the IT department decided to gradually bring the services online while remaining in a partial shutdown. for security reasons.

No group or government has been attributed to the other two attacks, although the timing implies links to Russian supporters. The German economy is heavily dependent on Russian oil and gas imports, and Berlin has been searching for alternatives since the start of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict.

Matthias Brandt, director of Deutsche Windtechnik, says high IT security standards are needed. A strong computer defense system is the basis for preventing unexpected cyber attacks like this. Install anti-ransomware software and a server-based firewall to protect your computing environment from within. Provide training to employees on cyber threats and equip them with appropriate processes. Use different strong passwords with multi-factor authentication for devices, and update them regularly. Detect suspicious activity and report it to the IT team. But never forget to take a step back. This is the key to recovery. Vinchin Backup & Recovery is an experiential virtual machine solution dedicated to data backup and recovery to protect important data from cybercriminals.

Step 1: Regularly Back up Ahead of Time

Backups are the first and last line of an anti-ransomware plan. Vinchin Backup & Recovery offers fully customizable backup strategies, differential backup, and incremental backup with automatic scheduling to meet different business needs. And the data encryption function ensures the safety of data during backup.

Step 2: Keep Ransomware Backups

Vinchin Backup & Recovery provides unique backup archive protection to protect stored backup data. The software monitors I/O in real time and can instantly reject data modification requests from any unauthorized applications (like ransomware or other malware). As a result, backups will be immune to ransomware infections and ready to intervene if something goes wrong.

Step 3: Minimize Damage with Effective Disaster Recovery

Vinchin Backup & Recovery complies with 3-2-1 backup rule by providing offsite backup and cloud storage functionality to ensure that your important data remains highly recoverable, even when the central Main data is crippled due to network attack. You can use offsite backups to instantly restore your business to a remote production environment, or retrieve backup data from the cloud and restore it to the main data center, minimizing downtime and financial loss while ensuring data integrity.

Cyberattacks are never just news from the press or other people’s stories, they are living examples all around us. We can all fall prey to hackers or ransomware groups if we don’t take the possible loss seriously. In fact, the importance of setting up a best vmware backup solutions cannot be overstated, and you’d better be prepared than sorry. You can now download the full 60-day free trial of Vinchin Backup & Recovery to learn more.