Late Friday MSC released an update that said its investigation has conclude that the issue is only related to its servers at its headquarters and customers can still make bookings via phone or email, which is not impacted. It did not elaborate on the cause of the incident.
“After several hours of investigations, we can now confirm that the issue is related to our Headquarters in Geneva only,” the company said in a string of Tweets. “The servers in the Headquarters have been shut down, and we’ve deployed a team of experts who are working hard to ensure that we can see return to normal operating conditions.”
“All our departments, terminals, depots etc. operate without disruptions,” the company added.
Swiss-based Mediterranean Shipping Company is the second largest container shipping line, controlling 571 ships representing 16% share of the world’s TEU capacity. It also participates in the 2M Alliance with Maersk, the world’s leading container line.
The outage can’t help but recall the 2017 NotPetya malware attack that crippled Maersk’s global networks and disrupted its container shipping operations for weeks, costing Maersk some $300 million.
The outage also comes at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic is already straining global supply chains.