Truckstop.com, a leading provider of software enabled services to the trucking industry suffered a malware attack that crippled the company over the Christmas holiday week. Trucking companies and brokers were required to use alternative services or resort to offline alternatives during the shutdown.
From an industry standpoint, the timing was unfortunate, but less impactful than if it happened during a busier week in the freight market. During the Christmas week, shippers are mostly shutdown or running reduced schedules, resorting in less freight being hauled.
The customer fallout for Truckstop.com is likely to be short-lived assuming the company is able to fully restore services by January 6th, when most trucking companies and brokers are back in full swing.
Many members of the Truckstop team worked tirelessly through the Christmas week to restore systems and resume operations, sacrificing time with friends and family.
Most of their desktop systems have been restored and payment systems are coming back online. The company, which is one of the largest payment and factoring providers in trucking, processed thousands of freight bills the night before Christmas.
The malware attack was first reported by FreightWaves Monday morning, with Truckstop.com providing continuous updates to customers and FreightWaves through the holiday week.
Earlier this week, FreightWaves offered tips on how customers can take steps to protect themselves against malware attacks.
The company sent an update to FreightWaves on Thursday afternoon describing the progress the company has made.
Here is the statement:
Truckstop.com is experiencing system issues, caused by malware, that have impacted multiple systems. We have been working around the clock to restore service and will continue to do so until we are fully operational.
Truckstop.com teams have restored most major desktop services and continue working to bring critical systems back online, including mobile services. We sincerely apologize for the disruptions this incident has caused and will continue to do everything we can to ensure you get paid and can manage your business.
We are committed to the carrier community and know many customers rely on Truckstop.com for payments and factoring services. Truckstop Pay and Truckstop Factoring have completed thousands of payments ensuring carriers were paid in time for Christmas.
We want to reassure you that the safety and security of customer information is our top priority. Should we determine that these issues have impacted the integrity of any customer information we will move quickly to notify anyone affected.
We will continue to provide updates as additional, pertinent information becomes available.
Check FreightWaves for on-going updates on the Truckstop.com recovery and other stories impacting the freight industry.