DP World Australia restricted access to its Australian port operations in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney on Saturday after a cyber incident was detected. DP World is Australia’s second largest port operator and manages almost 40% of the goods going in and out of the country.
The incident was first noticed on Friday evening when the port operator informed the Australian government. The National Cyber Security Coordinator, Air Marshal Darren Goldie said on X on 11 November that the priority “is to assist DP World Australia to resolve the incident, so they are in a position to restore access to the ports they operate across the country.” Goldie also said that the Australian Signals Directorate’s Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) is providing technical advice and assistance and the Australian Federal Police had commenced investigations into the incident.
DP World has kept its IT systems offline throughout the weekend. It had at one point informed the Federal government that “the timeframe for interruptions to continue is likely to be a number of days, rather than weeks.”
According to a recent Bloomberg report, DP World started to gradually resume activities on Monday and while offline during the weekend, it had worked with competitors to move time critical shipments such as medical supplies.
CSO has reached out to DP World for comment but had no response at the time of writing.