The enterprise data software company Alation confirmed that a system anomaly that affected some of its clients earlier was a cyber attack. The company indicated that it had found unauthorized activities in its system, was investigating the details and would disclose more information in due course.

Alation mainly provides data search and management software to business clients and supports the search of documents and data in natural languages. In recent years, the company has also extended its operations to AI, helping clients to organize scattered and messy data into usable content. According to the company, it serves more than 500 global enterprises, including about half of the United States Fortune 1000.

The event was first exposed to service anomalies.

On Tuesday this week, Alation informed of an unspecified incident, stating that part of the client ' s service availability had decreased, but that the problem had been addressed within one hour. A few days later, the company further confirmed that the incident involved a cyber attack.

The company has indicated to the outside world that it has now identified unauthorized activities in a system, but has not indicated how, why or how many customers were affected.

The scope of the impact remains unclear

To date, Alation has not indicated whether a formal notice has been given to the client or what precautions the client should take. Similarly, the company failed to confirm whether data had been stolen or uploaded during the incident.

It was reported that a large number of Alation systems were hosted on AWS, but it is not clear at this stage whether the incident was related to cloud infrastructure.

Corporate security incidents continue to increase

Recently, several enterprises have repeatedly disclosed data security incidents. It was reported that several companies had reported the theft of data following the invasion of the European Logistics Company Ceva Logistics. At the same time, hackers have been accused of continuing attacks on financial institutions and private equity companies in recent weeks.

The actual impact of the Alation incident remains to be further confirmed before further findings are made public.