Ingram Micro is facing a major cybersecurity crisis as a ransomware attack has triggered a multi-day IT outage, disrupting services for customers and partners across the globe. The outage, which reportedly began on July 3, has impacted several of the company’s core platforms and left it unable to process or ship orders.
Days after the incident occurred, on July 6, the global IT distribution giant officially confirmed detecting a ransomware attack. “Promptly after learning of the issue, the company took steps to secure the relevant environment, including proactively taking certain systems offline and implementing other mitigation measures,” the company said in a statement.
The company also said that it has launched an investigation with the assistance of leading cybersecurity experts and notified law enforcement, and is working to restore the affected systems so that it can process and ship orders. A message acknowledging the issue continues to be displayed on the company’s webpage as of Monday.
While Ingram Micro has not disclosed the full scope of the breach, the ransomware group SafePay is believed to be behind the attack. Reports suggest that the attackers may have infiltrated the company’s network through its GlobalProtect VPN.
“Ingram Micro is prioritising transparency by issuing regular updates via a dedicated status portal and direct email communication. The company is triaging customer tickets based on urgency—especially those affecting critical services and logistics—and offering clear escalation channels, workaround options, and FAQs to help minimise business disruption,” said Amit Jaju, senior managing director at Ankura Consulting.
Deep disruption
Industry experts say the response highlights how crucial swift, structured communication becomes in mitigating damage during cyber incidents of this scale. With operations decoupled from vendors and clients, the ripple effects are being felt across multiple layers of the supply chain, even if the full extent remains unclear.
“The attack on Ingram Micro has broad and deep implications, exposing the interconnectedness and interdependence of the entire IT value chain. One immediate impact was taking Ingram’s IT systems offline, effectively disconnecting them from vendors and customers. This led to significant delays in processing and fulfillment and potentially compromised critical customer information on costing and channel partners,” said Neil Shah, vice president, Counterpoint Research.
Cyberattacks on IT distributors directly compromise global supply chain elasticity as well. “With fulfillment platforms offline, enterprise buyers face order backlogs, shipment uncertainty, and stalled hardware provisioning. OEMs lose visibility into downstream demand; resellers breach client SLAs; and enterprise procurement teams face cascading deferrals in capital recognition,” said Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst and CEO at Greyhound Research.
Gogia added that the impact is most severe in regions and sectors where procurement centralisation is common, particularly in government, telecom, and large-scale retail.
As most logistics, routing, and client-to-vendor management rely on cloud data and services, the recent cyberattack on Ingram Micro highlights a critical vulnerability in this cloud-centric IT supply chain.
Pareekh Jain, CEO at EIIRTrend & Pareekh Consulting, said software and hardware companies work with distributors such as Ingram Micro for ease of doing business with enterprises. If enterprises find it difficult to trust distributors to buy software and hardware, it will impact the current distribution model for the software and hardware companies. They may have to go directly to enterprises, which will be costly, time-consuming and they may lose business because of distribution challenges.
Other than disrupting business, potential financial and legal exposure, the incident also erodes partner trust, especially if any sensitive data has been compromised.
Meanwhile, downstream retailers appear to have been shielded—at least for now. Several retailers, speaking off the record, said they don’t interact directly with Ingram Micro but rely on regional distributors who typically maintain buffer stock. “At least, these distributors haven’t witnessed any impact yet,” one retailer noted.
Weak links: tech supply chain targeted
This attack on Ingram Micro reflects a broader shift in threat actors focusing on increasingly targeting beyond software development firms to broader tech supply chain nodes to maximize disruption.
Jain added that entities like distributors, MSPs, and logistics providers offer high leverage with relatively lower security maturity compared to large enterprises. Enterprise security must now extend beyond internal controls to include continuous threat monitoring, resilience planning, and visibility across third-party networks. To evaluate and mitigate risks tied to critical IT distributors, organisations should enhance due diligence by assessing distributors’ security certifications, incident-response readiness, and tooling. “Contracts must include clear breach notification timelines, audit rights, and SLA terms for recovery. Leveraging third-party risk platforms and real-time attack-surface monitoring also ensures continuous oversight,” added Jaju.
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