VF Corporation Says Cyberattack Impacts Ability to Fulfill Orders

VF Corporation, the owner of Vans, The North Face, Timberland and Dickies, is having trouble fulfilling orders after a Wednesday (Dec. 13) cyberattack.

Consumers can place orders on most of its brands’ eCommerce sites, but the cybersecurity incident has impacted the firm’s ability to fulfill those orders, VF Corporation said in a Monday (Dec. 18) filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

“As the investigation of the incident is ongoing, the full scope, nature and impact of the incident are not yet known,” the company said in the filing. “As of the date of this filing, the incident has had and is reasonably likely to continue to have a material impact on the company’s business operations until recovery efforts are completed.”

VF Corporation detected unauthorized occurrences on part of its information technology systems Wednesday (Dec. 13), according to the filing. It immediately activated its incident response plan, shut down some systems and began an investigation with external cybersecurity experts.

“The threat actor disrupted the company’s business operations by encrypting some IT systems and stole data from the company, including personal data,” VF Corporation said in the filing.

The company is now working to bring the affected portions of its IT systems back online and implement workarounds to reduce the disruption of its ability to serve eCommerce consumers and wholesale customers, per the filing.

VF Corporation’s retail stores are open, and consumers can purchase the available merchandise, but the company’s operations are experiencing disruptions, the filing said.

In another cybersecurity incident, Fidelity National Financial (FNF) reported in November that its operations had been disrupted by a cyberattack.

As it blocked access to some of its systems to contain the incident, its title insurance, escrow and other title-related services were affected, the company said at the time.

In the last days of October and early days of November, Ace Hardware was unable to accept online orders due to a cyberattack that affected warehouse management, invoice and other delivery systems.

About one-fifth of Ace Hardware’s servers and networked devices were impacted by the attack for a time.