In a statement to shareholders on Tuesday JSE-listed Construction Company Stefanutti Stocks said it was hit by a cyberattack on the morning of 31 August.
It discovered the attack on its IT systems in the early hours of Monday morning. It said it will report the incident to “relevant enforcement agencies”.
“External IT forensic experts have been engaged to work with Stefanutti Stocks’ experts to investigate the incident. As a result, all IT systems have been shut down in order to remediate,” it said in the statement.
“This will cause a temporary disruption to certain central administrative functions. Notwithstanding this, site operations will continue unaffected.”
It added that it takes any threat to its IT systems “extremely seriously and that the incident is being fully investigated”. It didn’t provide any details on possible motives for the attack what the attacker or attackers were trying to do. “Any material developments will be communicated,” it said.
Stefanutti Stocks is one of South Africa’s biggest construction groups with about 12 000 employees.
Disclosure of the cyberattack comes after Experian South Africa reported a data breach (not a cyberattack) involving the records of as many as 24 million South Africans last month.