A cyberattack on a third-party software vendor used by Starbucks has disrupted the ability of employees to view and manage their schedules as well as track their hours.
Managers have been working on a manual solution to record employees’ hours to properly calculate their pay and help them manage their schedules, the company told CNBC on Nov. 25.
The ransomware attack, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal, has not impacted Starbucks’ ability to serve customers in its approximately 11,000 locations in North America, the company said. Starbucks added that the company is working with the vendor on a solution.
Starbucks did not name the vendor. However, the disruption comes in the wake of Blue Yonder, an Arizona-based division of Panasonic that sells supply chain software to Fortune 500 companies including Starbucks, saying in a news release on Nov. 22 that it experienced a ransomware attack a day earlier.
“Blue Yonder experienced disruptions to its managed services hosted environment, which was determined to be the result of a ransomware incident,” the company said.
Ransomware is malicious software used by criminals to prevent people from accessing computer files, systems or networks. The bad actors then demand a ransom payment in order for access to be returned, according to the FBI.