Container operations at the Port of Durban in South Africa have been halted by a suspected cyber attack against the South African port operator Transnet, on 22 July.
“Transnet is currently experiencing a disruption in some of its IT applications, and the source of this problem is being identified,” said the company in an announcement published on its social media.
The container terminals of the group have been non-operational, as the Navis system on the trucking side has been affected, according to a statement.
Navis has stated it is aware of the situation at Transnet and is in close contact with the Transnet team as they work to identify and isolate the cause of the disruption and restore operations.
“While the source of the disruption is not related to Navis, as a precautionary measure Transnet shut down all systems, including the servers running the N4 terminal application,” said Navis.
Additionally, in the Eastern Cape, terminal operations have been also stopped due to inclement weather conditions and will continue manually once it is safe to do so.
All the other port terminals are operational across the system, according to a Transnet announcement.
“All business continuity plans have been activated. Operations across the Group are
continuing, with the freight rail, pipelines, engineering and property divisions reporting
normal activity,” noted Transnet, which added that “The Ports Authority continues to operate, and vessels moving in and out of the ports are being recorded manually.”
However, the official website of the company has been down since 22 July, showing an error message.
Transnet, which operates major South African ports, including Durban and Cape Town, and a huge railway network, has already suffered major disruptions to its ports and national freight rail line due to days of unrest and violence in parts of South Africa in last week.
The state-owned operator stated, “Work is underway to reduce the downtime to ensure that the impacted systems are up and running again as soon as possible.”
