Data breach at Dr Reddy's; pharma giant shuts down offices

After a data breach on its major servers on Thursday, pharma giant Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories has now closed all its major plants across the world. This development comes days after the pharmaceutical company received approval from Drugs Controller Giant of India to conduct the phase 2/3 trials of the Russian vaccine in India.

In a statement to the stock exchanges, the company said that it has isolated all the data centre services in the wake of the cyber-attack and has taken all the required preventive actions. According to the company’s CIO Mukesh Rathi, the company is expected to restart all its services in the next 24 hours.

The data breach which took place between 4.00-5.00 pm hit the firm plants in India, Russia, Brazil, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

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The Lab had reapplied for the permission of the DCGI to conduct these trials of the Russian COVID-19 vaccine candidate Sputnik V in India. This according to the labs will be a multi-centre, randomised, controlled, and observer-blind study.

Additionally, earlier this month the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation’s Subject Committee on COVID-19 had asked the lab to re-apply. The lab stated that it cannot directly conduct the phase 3 trials in India. The committee panel had asked the Russian COVID-19 vaccine to test for safety and efficacy in a smaller trial.

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