Western Digital hit by network security breach, cloud services disruption

Western Digital Corp., the maker of computer storage devices, said this morning it’s looking into a “network security incident” after it discovered a breach of some of its systems by an unauthorized third party.

According to a press release, the incident occurred on March 26, and in response the company has brought in security and forensic experts as well as law enforcement.

Western Digital did not reveal any details as to what systems were affected by the attacker, noting that the investigation is still in its early stages. “Based on the investigation to date, the company believes the unauthorized party obtained certain data from its systems and is working to understand the nature and scope of that data,” the company wrote.

After discovering the attack, the company implemented security response efforts while responding to the attack. According to Western Digital, these were part of “proactive measures to secure operations” that included taking systems and services offline.

Over the weekend, some customers began to discover that certain online features were disrupted or offline. According to a service outage posted on April 2, these disruptions affected Western Digital’s cloud, proxy web, authentication, email and push notification services on April 2, including My Cloud, My Cloud Home, My Cloud Home (Duo), My Cloud OS5, SanDisk ibi and SanDisk Ixpand Wireless Charger.

Western Digital is known for designing and manufacturing storage technology for computers and other digital devices. It also offers My Cloud services to provide personal cloud online storage for consumers. Other portions of its service allow consumers to back up flash drives into the cloud by plugging them into a computer.

The company said it’s actively working on restoring the infrastructure and services impacted by the security incident, but the breach has caused and will most likely continue to cause ongoing disruptions to its operations.

Western Digital did not give any timeline as to when it would be able to bring its cloud-based services back online.

Image: CeBIT Australia/Flickr CC