Essendant hit by cyberattack

March 2023 may well go down as one of the most challenging months in the history of US wholesaler Essendant.

On the evening of 6 March, the company was hit by a network-wide outage that affected most of its IT applications and day-to-day operations for customers, staff and suppliers. Essentially, it meant it was unable to send or receive orders or run customer support.

Initial communications from Essendant suggested its network would be down for several days. However, the sheer magnitude of the task to clean up, restore, recover and test more than 100 systems soon became apparent.

It was not until 17 March that some ordering became possible through the Empower portal and customer care support was re-established –albeit via email only.

As of 22 March, EDI customers were also able to transact again, while outbound shipments via third-party carriers were back to normal. Nevertheless, incoming deliveries were still disrupted and the wholesaler was not planning to issue