Maersk повністю переробила свою ІТ-інфраструктуру, щоб відновитися після NotPetya – Case Study щодо кіберстійкості

Build a unified recovery playbook now to survive a cyber shock. Your organisation benefits from a resilient IT backbone, clear ownership, and a plan that covers people, process, and technology to recover quickly when a breach hits.

Maersk faced NotPetya in August 2017, forcing a shutdown of their global IT networks and shipping systems. From that moment, teams had to reconstitute thousands of servers, rebuild data flows, and restore operations with minimal downtime. Public estimates put the immediate losses at about £300 million, with recovery costs in the same order of magnitude as they rebuilt from scratch, a challenge that once seemed impossible.

The rebuild began with a clean slate: cloud-first architecture, standardised technology stacks, and automation to speed restore times. They replaced fragile, bespoke tools with modular components that could be used across regions. The effort adopted a medoc framework to align security and operations, reducing time to restore critical services and laying the groundwork for a scalable, competitive IT platform that could withstand future shocks. This design helps overcome future disruptions and keeps lines of business online.

Where their technology meets operations, Maersk built a security‑minded culture and a disciplined incident response. They aligned vendors, internal teams, and partners across the supply chain, ensuring continuity for customers and shipments on the side. Their ecosystem included coordination with courier partners and with FedEx to keep the flow moving even when parts of the network were offline.

Normally, a rebuild hinges on people, process, and partners. For your team, focus on mapping critical systems, validating backups, and running quarterly restore drills. Keep a clear view of where resources go, and ensure your budget aligns with risk reduction. Also involve your suppliers and logistics partners to strengthen the end‑to-end chain, because resilience lasts where technology, people, and partners work together.

NotPetya impact and remediation milestones

Immediate action: isolate affected segments within minutes, switch to clean backups, and begin a phased rebuild with strict governance and a daily update call. This keeps operations moving on the unaffected side while you focus on containment and a firm recovery path.

1. Minutes after detection: contain and cut off lateral movement; shut down non-essential services, disable risky remote access, revoke compromised credentials, and snapshot critical assets to prevent drop in data used by shipping operations.
2. July 2017 wake-up call for the giant firm: state cyber-security as a top priority; align cross-functional teams on focus areas; map snags to spot attack patterns and gaps; issue the first updated incident response plan and keep leadership informed with short update calls.
3. Assessment and plan: inventory assets used across the shipping side; classify by criticality; design a rebuilt backbone from the ground up with segmented networks and a secure-by-default baseline; prepare migration paths that minimise impact on customers.
4. Design and rebuild: rebuilt the core IT stack with a modular, resilient design; design controls emphasise least privilege, MFA for access, a strict patch cadence, and enhanced monitoring; cyber-security becomes an industry-wide priority that also guides supplier risk management.
5. Migration and testing: execute side-by-side migrations to avoid downtime; validate data integrity within minutes of each switch; complete end-to-end tests in the rebuilt environment within two weeks and maintain clear update calls with stakeholders.
6. Operational hardening: deploy a security operations centre, update runbooks, perform regular drills, and keep partners aligned; drop risk in critical lanes, replace or sandbox popular tools that fail to meet controls, and keep the overall footprint lean from legacy dependencies.
7. Outcomes and learnings: the firm gains improved MTTR and better visibility; the NotPetya impact acts as a wake-up call for the industry to invest in cyber-security hygiene and resilient architecture; the rebuilt platform supports shipping operations with greater reliability and a clear state of risk management.

Timeline of NotPetya outbreak, outage duration, and emergency containment

Isolate affected networks within the first hour and switch to offline backups to recover quickly while you document a clear containment plan for all sites.

The NotPetya outbreak began in late June 2017 in Ukrainian networks, traced to a compromised MeDoc update. From there, the infection spread around the globe, moving into additional networks through worm-like propagation and a Windows vulnerability that let it move laterally across organisations. Maersk, the Maersk Line operator, found its shipping and logistics operations come down as domain controllers, file shares, and ERP services collapsed. In hours, offices from Asia to Europe to the Americas lost access to critical systems, underscoring how a single supply-chain weakness in the Ukrainian MeDoc ecosystem could hit many business lines and create huge disruption for the industry.

Outage duration varied by site. Core IT services were down for about 10 days in many units, whilst shipping operations resumed gradually over the next two weeks. By early July, email and key applications began to return, and by mid-July most back-office processes had recovered to some degree. The speed depended on backups, network segmentation, and how quickly teams could switch to offline processes for bookings, manifests, and vessel handovers. The situation shows how problems upstream can affect many functions and come down on operations worldwide.

The emergency containment and rebuild followed a tight script. The chairman called for rapid, cross-border action, and teams executed steps to block lateral movement, cut external access, and rely on offline backups for critical tasks. Maersk rebuilt its IT backbone from the ground up, with a hardened, segmented line of defence and refreshed incident playbooks to reduce future risk. The outbreak highlighted the risk about third-party software like medoc and prompted snabes and industry peers to raise resilience measures, strengthen cyber hygiene, and close gaps in their operations for competitive advantage. Many have noted that after the incident, their shipping networks recovered faster, and the industry arrived at a stronger baseline for emergency containment and recoverability.

Rebuilding the IT backbone: architecture overhaul and security hardening

Start with a concrete action: replace legacy servers, install modern, scalable images, and deploy a layered security posture. Assign a chair for governance, run a controlled pilot, and ensure the plan keeps downtime to minutes rather than hours. This approach yields a clear result and keeps your focus on resilience. What your focus should be is reducing risk and ensuring continuous service across their organisation.

• Inventory all servers, compute nodes, storage and network devices; map critical workflows; identify lines of dependencies and single points of failure.
• Document data flows between on-premise and cloud resources; trace the line of dependencies to prevent blind spots.
• Prioritise systems by risk: customer-facing apps first, then internal tooling; set a target for migration days per cluster and track progress with time-bound milestones.
• Establish a governance chair and a weekly call to review progress and adjust scope as needed.
• Plan with a rollback path to avoid disruption without affecting business continuity.

• Segment networks to limit lateral movement and enforce least privilege on the policy side.
• Replace monolithic services with decoupled, containerised workloads; standardise images and configuration baselines; retire old servers.
• Consolidate identity with SSO, MFA, and privileged access management; integrate with existing directory services.
• Introduce centralised logging and monitoring stack; ensure data is ingested, indexed, and searchable for faster root-cause analysis.
• Plan reinstallation of critical services in a clean environment to remove drift; apply updated baselines and securely retire deprecated components.

• Implement a fixed patch management cadence: monthly scans, emergency patches within 24–48 hours for critical flaws; verify success via automated checks.
• Apply configuration baselines (CIS STIG or vendor equivalents); disable unused features; enforce auditing.
• Deploy EDR on endpoints, IDS/IPS at network edges, and microsegmented firewall rules to minimise exposure.
• Centralise logs, establish a SIEM, and set alert thresholds to reduce false positives; run regular validation of alerts with runbooks.
• Strengthen backups: encrypted, offsite copies and tested restoration; perform quarterly DR drills and validate RPOs.

1. Days 0–14: discovery, inventory, risk register, target architecture, and finalise migration plan; set up a weekly governance call with their stakeholders.
2. Days 15–30: reinstallation of core servers and OS images; baseline configs; begin network segmentation and identity enforcement; confirm backups are valid.
3. Days 31–60: migrate workloads to new images; deploy MFA, PAM, and zero-trust policies; update CI/CD pipelines; conduct pilot cutovers with minimal downtime.
4. Days 61–90: validate hardening, conduct DR drills, tabletop exercises; finalise runbooks and hand over to operations; measure MTTR and uptime improvements.

Metrics and outcomes: Time to detect and respond target under 15 minutes for critical events; MTTR for core services under two hours; uptime above 99.9% during the initial 90 days of the new backbone. Backups restored within one hour during drills; quarterly DR validation confirms readiness. Incidents caused by configuration drift and missteps drop significantly, and the wake-up call proves that many companies can overcome legacy gaps with disciplined automation. Their time to reinstall servers improves markedly, and experience shows that the added automation, tested runbooks, and clear ownership lines drive reliable service even under stress.

This wake-up call makes their companies realise that without automation and clear ownership, manual maintenance becomes a bottleneck. Added governance and practiced drills deliver what their teams need: a robust, repeatable process to move from problem to solution in days, not just time. Your focus stays on what matters–service quality, rapid recovery, and continuous improvement–while the architecture supports it with speed and reliability.

Data protection: backups, restoration tests, and data integrity checks

Implement immutable backups and run restoration tests monthly to validate rapid recovery after incidents like NotPetya. For Maersk, this approach cut damages and reduced downtime. Store copies offline and in a separate network segment to limit exposure during a cyberattack.

Detailed backup procedures protect data across many systems. Use versioned snapshots, offline vaults, and automated integrity checks. A manual restoration drill should confirm that reinstallation steps on a clean environment recover all services.

Data integrity checks verify recovered data against the original, using checksums, bit-by-bit comparisons, and end-to-end validation. If mismatches are found, teams fix gaps in data replication or ransomware shielding before customers are affected.

Rehearse full restores across the shipping network: databases, file stores, and shipping documents like courier manifests. This practice keeps service continuity even when disruptions hit remote sites.

Establish a schedule for automated backups alongside weekly manual checks. The rude awakening from NotPetya serves as a continued reminder that technology choices, processes, and governance must align to safeguard critical data.

Maersk found that backups alone do not guarantee resilience; restoration agility matters. Run WannaCry scenario tests to confirm that network, endpoints and cloud layers reconnect without data loss.

The Chairman says the future of data protection rests on proactive testing and clear ownership. Enter a cycle where teams validate backups, restores, and integrity checks before any live event.

Over time, efforts from IT, shipping, and service teams built a more connected protection stack. Found many safeguards now work together to prevent damages and speed up reinstallation when needed.

Network and identity: segmentation, IAM controls, and privileged access

Implement strict network segmentation immediately to contain breaches without manual containment. Separate servers, applications, and data stores into distinct zones and apply policy at every workload boundary. Add microsegmentation, enforce identity-driven rules, and monitor East-West traffic through firewalls and host-based controls. For møller-maersk, the rebuilt IT network grouped core services, business applications, and external interfaces into three zones, and tested segmentation automatically, validating isolation within minutes.

IAM controls prioritise least privilege and fast, controlled access. Deploy RBAC and Just-In-Time (JIT) privileged access, require MFA on all admin sessions, disable shared accounts, and vault credentials with automated rotation. Apply policy uniformly across on-prem and cloud workloads so every privileged action is auditable. These measures reduce the attack surface and support update cycles through the environment. From lessons learned after NotPetya, identity and network changes tightened.

Privileged access management tightens control over administrators and service accounts. Use a PAM solution to vault credentials, rotate keys, enforce least privilege on servers and applications, and require jump hosts with session recording. Tag dynamic privileges with snabes to map access to a specific operation, and ensure the chairman enforces quarterly reviews and policy adherence across teams.

Monitoring and governance tie the whole approach together. Centralise logs, enforce real-time alerts for abnormal attempts, and run periodic access audits. Establish SLAs for revoking access after personnel changes, and maintain an immutable trail that lines up with rebuild milestones and regulatory requirements.

Leadership narrative: CEO insights, stakeholder communication, and business recovery trajectory

Recommendation: Establish an executive crisis line that delivers updates every few minutes, with a single owner for decisions and a public-facing service status page to reduce uncertainty for customers and partners.

The CEO reframed the NotPetya incident as a business-test of resilience against malicious activity, not a purely IT problem. By speaking plainly about risk, the CEO unified leadership, shortened the decision cycle, and kept the team focused on protecting customers and key services. The approach also acknowledged Wannacry-style threats we had studied, guiding our preparedness and response mindset.

Stakeholder communication became a disciplined practice: we issued concise, factual updates to the board, the executive team, and key partners. Noting where we stood, we explained the time to service restoration, the damage control measures, and how we anticipated the impact on product lines. Imagine a scenario where such updates did not exist–the line of communication would blur, and trust would erode. The clear line of communication reduced speculation and built trust with every stakeholder.

Recovery trajectory: we rebuilt the core infrastructure, including the giant data centre, with updated servers, new network segmentation, and hardened backups. The work proceeded around the clock, reducing downtime from days to hours, then minutes in critical windows. We found that parallel workstreams accelerated the return, and we added redundant lines and a fault-tolerant service approach, enabling product releases to resume and customer-facing services to come online in a controlled sequence. This rebuilt backbone positions the company for the future and limits damages from similar outbreaks.

Lessons and actions: we implemented a modular, tested incident response playbook; established a robust vendor risk programme to avoid supply-chain shocks–recognising how incidents can ripple through partners like FedEx; trained teams to manage cyber threats in cyberspace; and ensured that every leader saw the link between IT resilience and business value. We added monitoring, detection, and faster decision lines to prevent a future crisis from turning into a longer disruption. The focus remained on customers, products, and the service line, notching clear progress and continued improvement, with many concrete steps documented for future readiness.