Under attack

Cyber attacks are in the news again and are now far more dangerous; as reports have detailed, they have caused shutdowns on an oil pipeline and at the world’s largest meat producer’s plants around the world.

Opticians and the optical sector have not been exempted from cyber attacks. Back in November 2020, a data breach in the US at Luxottica exposed the personal and protected health information of 829,454 patients at LensCrafters, Target Optical, EyeMed, and other eye care practices. It appears that Luxottica’s appointment scheduling application was hacked. This data breach was followed by a Nefilim ransomware attack at the company a month later that led to significant outages, interruptions and theft of unencrypted files.