Recently in the new for receiving the approval from the Drug Control General of India (DCGI) to conduct an adaptive phase 2/3 human clinical trial for Sputnik V vaccine in India, Hyderabad based Dr Reddy's has become a victim of a mega data breach.

Due to a ransomware attack on 22 October on its IT systems, the company has shut down all its servers.

"In the wake of a detected cyber-attack, we have isolated all data center services to take required preventive actions", stated Dr Reddy's soon after the incident occured.

Commenting on this development, Mukesh Rathi, CIO, Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories said, “We are anticipating all services to be up within 24 hours and we do not foresee any major impact on our operations due to this incident.”

Although the reason behind this attack is unknown, it is likely that the target is the COVID-19 vaccine development data.

Similar incidents of cyberattacks have been reported by a few Japanese research institutes last week. As a result, the National Center of Incident Readiness and Strategy for Cybersecurity (NISC), a Japanese government body that establishes standards for cybersecurity for government agencies, has urged companies to raise alert levels against such attempts to steal confidential information