UK steel industry supplier Vesuvius says ‘cyber incident’ cost £3.5 million

Engineering company Vesuvius, which announced in February that it was managing a cyber incident, now says the episode will cost the company £3.5 million ($4.6 million).

The nature of the incident has still not been disclosed. In a statement on Thursday to the Regulatory News Service — the formal mechanism for publicly listed companies in the U.K. to communicate to the market — Vesuvius said despite the episode it had exceeded trading expectations.

Shares in the company, which employs more than 10,000 people and is one of the 350 most valuable businesses listed on the London Stock Exchange, rose to just over £4.18 on Thursday, up 3% from £4.05 on February 6 when the incident was first reported.

Vesuvius, which brought in over £1.6 billion in revenue for the 2021 calendar year, was the second British industrial ceramics manufacturer to announce a cyber incident in 2023.

In January, Morgan Advanced Materials — a company that helps make semiconductors — also filed a cybersecurity incident notice with the London Stock Exchange.

Morgan, which has nearly 7,800 employees globally and annual revenues of just over £950 million ($1.15 billion), saw its share price drop by more than 5% when it subsequently disclosed that its cyberattack could cost the company up to £12 million.

Again, the company did not confirm the nature of the attack, although the description of it was consistent with ransomware.