Photo by Bermix Studio on Unsplash

As Americans were preparing for the Fourth of July weekend, Kaseya—a substantial IT management company—was hit with a disastrous ransomware attack.

According to an article from The Guardian, a security company called Huntress Labs reported that 200 American businesses as well as businesses located in Sweden and Germany were impacted as a result of the attack. Kaseya services both small and large scale companies, so this breach has the potential to affect all sorts of business operations as well as the global economy. Kaseya continues to provide updates to the public and its users.

A July 5 report from NPR provided context into the breach as well. The attack was the largest recorded global ransomware attack to date. NPR also stated that the group presumed to be responsible, REvil, has offered to unscramble all of the affected systems in exchange for $70 million in cryptocurrency.

The CEO of Kaseya, Fred Voccola, spoke with Good Morning America and provided updates, according to Monday’s article from NPR. He said that only 50-60 of the company’s 37,000 customers were impacted by the attack. However, the company’s VSA software, which handles security and software updates, was the area that experienced the breach.

In an updated announcement from July 4, the FBI stated that customers who believe their systems were compromised should follow the recommended instructions provided by Kaseya. That includes shutting down their existing VSA server and reporting the potential attack to the FBI.