Royal Mail has backed up its international tracked services as it makes steady progress in recovering IT systems hit by a ransomware attack, tentatively blamed on Russian-speaking Lockbit Group or an affiliate, before January 2023.
In an update posted on its consumer-facing portal, Royal Mail said it is now in a position to resume international tracked services of letters, large letters and parcels to all destinations for business customers and consumer users of its online shipping system. These systems, which customers use to select services, print labels and ship items, were successfully re-enabled on the afternoon of Monday 30 January.
“We continue to make progress to export an increasing number of items to an increasing number of international destinations using alternative solutions and systems unaffected by recent cyber incidents,” the company said.
“Our focus was on sending export parcels and letters over our network before the cyber incident. We have been successfully sending standard export letters since the service was reinstated January 18 and international tracked and signed and international signed letters and parcels From January 26“
Royal Mail first detected unauthorized access to its systems before Tuesday 10 January Going public with the news the next day.
It was badly affected by a ransomware attack that disrupted its international services after it was unable to send letters or parcels from the UK for days. This caused frustration for many small and medium-sized enterprises that depended on Royal Mail to send goods out of the country.
In the three weeks since the attack, it has focused its energies on deploying several technically unspecified solutions that appear to be successfully mitigating the impact of ransomware lockers.
However, this work is ongoing and, for the time being, Royal Mail continues to ask customers to refrain from submitting untracked export parcels to the postal network. It is still unable to process new parcels purchased through post office branches.
That said, it’s still possible to use a brick-and-mortar branch to ship export parcels through the Parcelforce Worldwide service, drop off labeled items online, and purchase international standard and economy letter services.
“We are working hard to resume more services through Post Office branches and will provide more updates on these services as soon as possible. Import operations continue to perform a complete service with some small delay. Domestic services are not affected,” the agency said.
“We regret the disruption this incident is causing to customers. Our teams are working around the clock to restore remaining export services for letters and parcels as soon as possible.”
The attack on Royal Mail is one of a series of high-profile incidents that have affected UK companies in the past month, including a series of ransomware incidents. guardian Newspapers, car dealerships Arnold Clarkand KFC and Pizza Hut operators Yum! brand. Another cyber attack compromised the details of 10 million people shopping online At JD Sports Published on Monday 30th January.