Omnicom Media Group reportedly falls prey to cyber attack

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Omnicom Media Group has reportedly been hit by a cyber attack, resulting in the agency turning to third-party experts to identify the IT disruption, AdAge reported. OMG said it has experienced "disruption to parts of its IT network" in recent days, which was caused by a cyber incident. According to AdAge, OMG said it is confident that "no data is at risk". While this has resulted in interruptions for some of its agencies outside of the US, it said operations are still going on as per normal and it has "made significant progress" on reinstating the functionality of the affected systems, AdAge added. MARKETING-INTERACTIVE has reached out to OMG for comment.

The agency, which is expected to report its fourth quarter and full year 2020 results on 18 February, posted a net income of US$313.3 million in the third quarter of 2020 compared to US$290.2 million during the same period in 2019. According to the network agency, global revenue for Q3 2020 dipped 11.5% to US3.21 billion as a result of the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Revenue for its advertising discipline dipped 11.7% compared to Q3 2019, while CRM CX decreased 19.3%. Meanwhile, CRM execution and support dipped 19.4%, and PR dipped 3.4%, while healthcare increased 3.8%.

OMG is not the only ad agency to have been impacted by a cyber attack. On 27 June 2017, a number of WPP companies fell prey to a ransomware attack that hit organisations worldwide. This resulted in the server going down and its website being made unavailable. Former WPP CEO Martin Sorrell said in an internal memo then that it was working with IT partners and law enforcement agencies to assess the situation, take all precautionary steps and return to normal operations as soon as it can.

Photo courtesy: 123RF

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