By James Thaler

June 17 - (The Insurer) - Erie Insurance said Tuesday it now has control of its systems and sees “no evidence of ransomware” and “no indication of ongoing threat actor activity,” adding that it is working “around the clock” to restore access to staff and key stakeholders.

Erie provided the update in a statement to Cyber Risk Insurer, after this publication reported on Monday that the systems outage had extended into a 10th day after suffering a breach that began on June 7, in an attack believed to have been carried out by Scattered Spider.

“Our teams – partnering with leading cybersecurity experts – continue working around the clock to restore access for customers, agents and employees,” Erie said in a statement provided early Tuesday afternoon.

“Unfortunately, incidents like this are becoming increasingly sophisticated and can impact even the most well-protected organizations," it added.

Erie said that upon detecting unauthorized activity, the company took immediate action to contain the issue and has since implemented additional security measures to further strengthen its systems.

“At this time, we have control of our systems. We have seen no evidence of ransomware and there is no indication of ongoing threat actor activity,” the company said.

“We take these matters very seriously and are committed to providing updates as appropriate. We encourage customers to follow best practices around personal security and notify their financial institutions of any unusual activity,” it added.

The company reiterated that during this outage it will not contact customers by phone or email to request payments, while instructing customers not to click on links from unknown sources or to share personal information via phone or email.

It also encouraged policyholders to use a telephone number to initiate any claim as remediation work of the company’s systems remains ongoing.

The update from Erie comes after a senior Google analyst on Monday said that the insurance industry “should be on high alert” for attacks by Scattered Spider.

Scattered Spider is a term used by cybersecurity industry experts to track activities linked to a set of hacking tactics, techniques and procedures, particularly sophisticated social engineering.

Cyber Risk Insurer was the first to report last week that Philadelphia Insurance Companies had suffered a major ransomware attack beginning on June 9, with Scattered Spider identified by sources as behind the outage.

Earlier on Monday, Cyber Risk Insurer reported that Philadelphia Insurance Companies was in the midst of a forensic investigation and has also been in contact with law enforcement, after discovering unauthorized activity within its network last week.

The insurer started bringing staff back to a number of its offices gradually on Friday, focusing on locations that have IT personnel locally and asking staff to connect to the network via ethernet cables rather than WiFi.