Italian oil and gas industry contractor Saipem S.p.A. has reportedly confirmed that a Monday cyberattack impacted its servers and infrastructure in the Middle East as well as in Scotland.
The specific nature of the attack has not yet been shared, but Saipem’s head of digital and innovation Mauro Piasere said that it originated from Chennai, India, according to Reuters. Roughly 400 servers were affected, a Bloomberg report added, with operations impacted in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, as well as in Aberdeen, Scotland.
Saipem's main operating centers in Italy, France and Britain remained unscathed, and the company claims it did not lose any data, due to its comprehensive use of back-up systems. However, the company was forced to shut down its affected servers while investigating the incident.
"We are collecting all the elements useful for assessing the impact on our infrastructures and the actions to be taken to restore normal activities," says a Dec. 10 press release posted on Saipem's website. "We are also in the process of notifying the report of the incident to the competent authorities."
Specializing in drilling services and the installation of energy pipelines, Saipem is a subsidiary of Italian energy giant Eni.
