Clorox Wipes May Be Harder To Find In MD After Cyberattack

MARYLAND — Shoppers in Maryland may soon find a popular disinfecting wipes product missing from store shelves as flu and cold season ramps up.

The Clorox Company said in a filing Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it found “unauthorized activity” on some of its IT systems. The attack, announced Aug. 14, forced Clorox to take multiple systems offline and switch to manual ordering and processing procedures, reducing its rate of operations. Now it’s warning of a recent “elevated level of consumer product availability issues.”

“The cybersecurity attack damaged portions of the Company’s IT infrastructure, which caused wide scale disruption of Clorox’s operations,” the filing said. “The Company is repairing the infrastructure and is reintegrating the systems that were proactively taken offline.”

The looming shortage comes as flu season begins to slowly tick up across the country, including in Texas and Washington, D.C., where flu activity was already moderate the week of Sept. 9.

In Maryland, flu activity was categorized as minimal as of Sept. 9, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Out of 2,949 flu tests, 5.12 percent were positive, with 1.62 percent of cases being treated at emergency rooms.

Clorox, which is a publicly traded company, said it expects it will begin returning to normal automated order-processing next week. It has resumed production at the “vast majority of its manufacturing sites,” but expects it’ll ramp up to full production over time. How long that’ll take is unclear.

“At this time, the Company cannot estimate how long it will take to resume fully normalized operations,” the filing said.

Clorox is still evaluating the extent of the impact the cyberattack will have on its finances and business. The company said it expects order processing delays and product outages will have a material impact on its quarterly financial results early next year.

“It is premature for the Company to determine longer-term impact, including fiscal year outlook, given the ongoing recovery,” Clorox said.