Australia's ALS restores most services after cyber incident; data impact under review (updated)

ALS

05/05/2026 24:56

Recasts paragraph 1, updates with details and context from paragraph 2 onwards

May 5 (Reuters) - Technical services provider ALS ALQ.AX said on Tuesday that unauthorized third-party access to parts of its IT systems caused a 'temporary disruption' to some of its operations, but swift containment measures helped restore most services.

ALS, which provides scientific testing services spanning commodities, food and pharmaceuticals, has informed the Australian Cyber Security Centre and is working with clients, authorities and regulators to assess any data impact.

The company did not provide any timeline or details on when the disruption began.

The breach, flagged as malicious cyber activity, triggered immediate action from ALS' IT and security teams, supported by external incident-response specialists, the company said.

The incident follows a
warning
 from Australia's prudential regulator last week that banks are lagging behind advances in artificial intelligence.

The regulator said that emerging systems such as Anthropic's Mythos could accelerate and intensify cyber attacks.

 (Reporting by Kumar Tanishk in Bengaluru; Editing by Jonathan Ananda and Sherry Jacob-Phillips)

 ((Tanishk.Kumar@thomsonreuters.com; X: @thatstanishk;))