Italy’s national railway operator, Ferrovie dello Stato (FS), has suffered a massive data breach involving 2.3 TB of sensitive information. The data was stolen not from FS directly, but via a breach of its IT service provider, Almaviva. Threat actors are now threatening to release the data publicly.
Business Impact
This breach exposes critical infrastructure details, employee data, and potentially passenger information. It highlights the critical risk of third-party vendors. A compromise at a key IT provider can have cascading effects, leading to operational disruption and massive reputational damage for the client organization.
Why It Happened
This was a classic supply chain attack. Attackers targeted the Managed Service Provider (MSP), Almaviva, likely exploiting weaker defenses there to gain aggregated access to its high-value clients, including the national railway.
Recommended Executive Action
Review your Third-Party Risk Management (TPRM) strategy. Ensure you have visibility into the security posture of your critical IT providers (MSPs). Mandate strict data segregation and access controls to limit the blast radius if a vendor is compromised.
Hashtags: #DataBreach #SupplyChain #Railways #Italy #CyberAttack #Almaviva #ThirdPartyRisk #InfoSec