"But will UKG have the support staff to handle those transitions? The day's top local stories plus breaking news, weather and sports brought to you by the News4JAX team. "Because of staffing shortages caused by COVID and high patient numbers, many of our nurses were receiving incentive pay for taking on extra shifts, for example, and we didn't want to deny them that pay.". Kronos announced Sunday that its reaching out to clients this week, at which point, the company will have a better idea of when its systems will be back up and running. Unless you pay the ransom, these things can take weeks to solve.". Yeah, absolutely. For the little guys that are clocking in and out every day, this is detrimental. ", White said the after-care support from UKG for customers affected by the outage will prove telling. Now back from leave, the worker says shes still getting 70 percent despite working full-time. GWs payroll department will subsequently reconcile the data to ensure employees are paid appropriately. Four of its core applications are now unavailable to customers after the "private cloud" IT environment in which they run was breached and then locked with ransomware December 11. "The Kronos parent company, [UKG], handled a very difficult circumstance with class and urgency.". 1998 - 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. | All Rights Reserved. We are reaching out with an update regarding the cybersecurity incident that has disrupted the Kronos Private Cloud. Kronos ransomware attack 2021: Outage may impact HR systems for weeks by Michelle Shen, 13 Dec 2021, USA Today; Some Kronos Customers Face Payroll, Scheduling Disruptions From Hack - CFO by Matthew Heller, 15 Dec 2021, CFO; UKG - Wikipedia; hUKG Kronos Private Cloud Status Updates, 22 Dec 2021 "They have been much more transparent," Pemberton said of UKG, adding that the company eventually provided more frequent estimated timelines for service restoration. Customers have not been without their frustrations, however. } February 3, 2022 6:08 pm 3:30 minute read UPDATE: Puma was one of the companies from which employees' personal data was stolen. It merged with Ultimate Software, an HR systems vendor, in 2020. We took immediate action to investigate and mitigate the issue, have alerted our affected customers and informed the authorities, and are working with leading cybersecurity experts. ", In an email, a UKG spokesperson provided a statement on the company's response: "Core functionality for customers impacted by this incident was restored by January 22. Well, youre not allowed to submit payroll corrections at this time.. 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Roughly one-third of UMass workers are classified as exempt employees, he said. COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) One of central Ohios biggest employers is working to fix the problems caused by a ransomware attack that crippled its payroll software. Updated: Jan 4, 2022 / 10:59 AM EST. UKG Inc. is continuing to investigate and manage outages related to a ransomware attack that forced it to shut down some of its Kronos cloud-based services that log and store employee working. UKG has been "generous at times" in financial negotiations following the incident, Pemberton noted, but he said he would like to see reimbursement beyond two months of service credit from the company. If your child will play baseball or softball this spring, youll need to stock up on appropriate clothing and equipment. The Universitys online time reporting system for employees, Kronos, has been restored after a cyberattack last month possibly compromised GW employees personal information. The I-TEAM checked with other hospitals in our area. The vendor has restored its time-keeping and payroll services after a ransomware attack disrupted the lives of. Our team members continue to be paid on time, using a combination of scheduled work hours and average pay based on prior pay cycles. We are more than just a law firm for employees - we are an employee's fiercest advocate, equipping employees with the legal representation needed . SHRM Employment Law & Compliance Conference, Concerns Linger Following UKG Ransomware Attack, New OSHA Guidance Clarifies Return-to-Work Expectations, Trump Suspends New H-1B Visas Through 2020, Faking COVID-19 Illness Can Have Serious Consequences, Automate HR reporting and analytics with Employee Cycle, Turning to Virtual CISO Services to Ease the Cybersecurity Talent Crunch, Why You Cant Find a Chief Information Security Officer. **When can we expect this to be resolved? But when another email on Sunday confirmed that things were still down, "that was not a good sign," Melgar said. UMass Memorial Health's recent implementation of Epic, a clinical system used by healthcare providers, prepared staff to coordinate around an incident like the Kronos outage, Melgar said. "I know this for a fact, so I'm not giving you a hypothetical," Melgar continued. Neither members nor non-members may reproduce such samples in any other way (e.g., to republish in a book or use for a commercial purpose) without SHRMs permission. Vendor contracts are typically written with an eye toward data security issues. Topics covered: National employment laws, harassment, accommodations, training, and more. **Please open a case in the UKG Kronos Community by visiting https://community.kronos.com. And we [knew] we could continue to do that. We are committed to ensuring associates receive pay for the hours they have worked in supporting our patients and their families. January 4, 2022. . [] Yes, we continue to use Kronos.". We recommend that all KRONOS and KRONOS X users update to version 3.1.0. UKG, the parent company of workforce management platform Kronos, notifies clients of a "ransomware incident.". We understand you have questions here's what we know so far. The next phase will be restoring service completely. Topics covered: Talent acquisition, diversity and inclusivity in hiring, employer branding, performance evaluations and more. After Kronos announced in mid-December that its human resources software had been targeted in a ransomware attack, the thousands of employers that use the software came up with different ways to make sure workers wouldnt miss a paycheck. We are proven, experienced, employee-focused attorneys representing workers across the United States in all types of workplace disputes. As noted at the time of the ransomware attack, notable Kronos customers include Tesla Inc., Marriott International Inc., Yamaha Corp . Jennifer, who anchors The Morning Shows and is part of the I-TEAM, loves working in her hometown of Jacksonville. It happened during a particularly challenging time of year; employers had to find ways to pay workers holiday pay and overtime as employees worked extra shifts to cover staff shortages caused by the omicron variant of the coronavirus and ongoing resignations. If you work at one of these hospitals and are concerned about your pay, we want to hear from you. Prior to the outage, UMass workers would clock in either manually or remotely, through an app. Topics covered: Pay & bonuses, salary history, pay transparency, raises, total rewards, and more. Topics covered: Talent acquisition, diversity and inclusivity in hiring, employer branding, performance evaluations and more. All of the employees with whom we spoke said they are already overwhelmed working during the pandemic at the hospital and feel like no one is answering their questions and concerns or providing any sense of urgency to get them the money that they earned. one senior leader compared the Kronos outage to Hurricane Katrina: a worst-case perfect-storm scenario beyond anyone's contingency plans. But experts say fallout from the attack will continue, given that some customer data was stolen, companies will have to transition manual records back into UKG systems and shaken clients are questioning their future with the vendor. While ransomware caused massive issues with the Kronos Public Cloud, delaying payroll for customers in mid-December, UKG later . . January 14, 2022 - HR management solutions . Neither Sainsbury's nor Kronos has issued a formal statement about the impact of the outage. This winter, popular payroll, time, and attendance management platform Ultimate Kronos Group (Kronos) had devastating news for 2,000 clients that depend on its cloud-based solutions, Kronos Private Cloud (KPC): On December 11, the company discovered a ransomware attack and disclosed the attack to impacted clients on December 12. A manual check for additional hours worked can be cut upon team member and manager request. Care New England spokesperson Jessica McCarthy confirmed that an outage caused by a cyberattack on Kronos Private Cloud . "In general, security on public clouds is tested and updated more regularly and is more robust than private clouds, which often have more outdated technology. Emails sent by Kronos to its corporate customers, seen by The Register, confirm the firm has pulled its . He said he was part of a group that received an email indicating Kronos was down. "This was unparalleled, unmatched," said Richard Pemberton, senior HRIS analyst at MHI Shared Services Americas and former Kronos employee. The outagewhich lasted more than a month for many UKG clientsforced thousands of organizations to scramble to create manual workarounds. **What happened? More than two months after a cyber attack hit Ultimate Kronos Group, disrupting payroll and timekeeping systems across the world, customers are still being impacted by secondary data breaches. Security experts say public clouds often are more hardened because they're regular targets of hackers and they tend to attract the best security professionals in the field. In addition to employee-driven suits, Mellen said UKG could potentially face lawsuits from employers. Kronos says it confirmed the theft of personal data on January 7, 2022, and that Puma was notified of the incident on January 10. Because the outage occurred during a holiday period, such employees were potentially using accrued paid time off or vacation time. "While the nature of this situation was such that it required considerable time, energy and resources to manage in order to mitigate negative impacts to our employees, Keolis continuously strives to enhance and improve our own systems to minimize vulnerability for our systems and protocols, even when we rely on external vendors to provide critical services," Oehler continued. "The first what I would call 'clean' payroll would have been the Feb. 3 payroll," said Sergio Melgar, executive vice president and chief financial officer of the health system. Asked how UMass is planning to respond to similar events in the future, Melgar divulged that it is working on an upgrade to its ERP system, which has a timekeeping element within it that could serve as a backup. Webinar Kronos said in a statement last Saturday that they had restored the platforms core software to all customers. To our knowledge, the information we have in our Kronos-hosted application does not include sensitive personally identifiable information, said an initial statement from OhioHealth regarding the ransomware attack. The course of the day's events made it clearer what UMass was facing, however. With just one game remaining before the tournament, the Colonials are locked into the top seven, ensuring a first-round bye in the Atlantic 10 tournament. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast. The outage "only affected some overtime, etc.," Leveton said. Members may download one copy of our sample forms and templates for your personal use within your organization. In an interview, Melgar provided HR Dive a detailed timeline of events, from the moment UMass recognized Kronos' services went down, to his communication with executives and Kronos representatives, to the eventual restoration of services. Customers including Tesla, PepsiCo and NYC transit workers are. "And it can be incredibly cumbersome, especially if you're doing it weekly.". We took immediate action to investigate and mitigate the issue, and have determined that this is a ransomware incident affecting the Kronos Private Cloudthe portion of our business where UKG Workforce Central, UKG TeleStaff, Healthcare Extensions, and Banking Scheduling Solutions are deployed. "There's no vendor on the market that has the same capabilities that Kronos has for timekeeping, and we would have to train so many people," Pemberton said. var currentUrl = window.location.href.toLowerCase(); AUSTIN (KXAN) Problems still linger for some organizations weeks after Kronos fell victim to a ransomware attack. Ultimate Kronos Group ("Kronos") is a well-known workforce management platform used to track employee scheduling, attendance, and payroll. For example, healthcare providers impacted by the outage may have been managing outbreaks of the omicron variant. He said he was part of a group that received an email indicating Kronos was down. The OhioHealth employee explained that hourly workers received the average of the last three pay periods prior to the attack. Then, adding insult to injury, timekeeping and payroll went down for many. Updated: Feb 9, 2022 / 11:59 PM CST. The reconciliation will include a review of actual hours worked, overtime and any shift differential pay, officials said. The following bullet points contain general advice on best practices during the outage, but employers are encouraged to consult with counsel given the variation in how an outage can impact their operations and the various state laws involved: Ensure that employees are paid in a timely manner for the current/next payroll cycle. In response to additional questions from NBC4 regarding a timeline, an OhioHealth spokesman replied, OhioHealths biggest priority is to make sure our associates are paid on time. "And so I needed to know, are you going to have a system up? And even then, it won't be perfect, Melgar said, again noting the complexity of UMass' payroll. The I-TEAM contacted Kronos asking what it is doing to get the payroll system back up. If your company uses Kronos, you might not be able to use it to clock in and out of work - for a few . We have had an open line of communication with Kronos throughout this disruption and have been assured that healthcare clients, like OhioHealth, are at the top of the priority list. Dear Kronos users, As you may be aware, on December 13 we were notified about an issue with the Kronos application. **While we currently have no indication that there is, we are investigating whether or not there is any relationship between the security incident described above and the Log4j vulnerability. You have successfully saved this page as a bookmark. In today's video Cyber Security expert Bryan Hornung looks at. Re: Kronos Application Outage Update. UMass' immediate attention turned to payroll processing for the payroll period ending Dec. 11, the day before UKG's disclosure. The incident affected customers using UKG's Kronos Private Cloud product. After the outage, Melgar got together with UMass' CIO and senior vice president of finance for joint meetings, later adding other staff to their calls. $(document).ready(function () { But the fallout may pan out in a variety of other ways in the coming months and years. We are working to have recommendations specific to your product and clock model soon. Kronos has reported on its status update page that those affected by the ransomware attack can expect to hear from a company agent who will assist them directly in restoring services between January 3rd and January 7th. He also discussed UMass' future plans to respond to similar incidents and the lessons learned from what Melgar said he described to UMass executives as "the most serious problem we have ever faced.". As a result, UKG continues to strongly recommend our customers work with their leadership to activate their business continuity plans. Weve communicated that to staff throughout the Kronos outage so they should be aware and we will continue to do so moving forward.. Media reports have already begun to take note of challenges filed by workers who say they were owed back pay due to errors caused by the outage. "UKG has learned a painful lesson, but it's a very difficult lesson to learn from," Pemberton said. Build specialized knowledge and expand your influence by earning a SHRM Specialty Credential. Laconia employees have not been affected by the Kronos outage. The Colonials defeated Duquesne 71-68 in the second round of the A-10 tournament Thursday after a heroic shot from graduate student guard Mia Lakstigala. Feb. 9, 2022, 7:41 PM. According to a blog post from the company, a number of its cloud-based timekeeping products were affected by the data breach. I worked at a company that used Kronos. Penn Highlands Healthcare, a regional system in northwestern Pennsylvania, praised Kronos' response. var currentLocation = getCookie("SHRM_Core_CurrentUser_LocationID"); In addition to employee-driven suits, Mellen said UKG could potentially face lawsuits from employers. Published March 29, 2022 . Older Post Digest: SHARE Job Fair, 2022 Dues Increase, Members Improving their Work, and More. ", Following the ransomware attack, Melgar said UMass is still a Kronos customer; "We have to be. "What we had basically was joint leadership that accepted joint accountability for the process.". Kronos has initiated national marketing efforts to provide PPE supplies and Covid test kits with direct product sales from PPE manufacturers to clients and governments. As a result, Kronos Private Cloud backups are currently unavailable. United States: The Human Resources Impact Of The Kronos Ransomware Attack 13 January 2022 by Chenee Castruita (Lexington) Freeman Mathis & Gary The unique combination of COVID-19 and a drastic decrease in the workforce found more workers putting in overtime this holiday season. To ensure employees are paid,. . And for those customers who don't want to move or upgrade right away, what will UKG do to assure them they have fixed whatever gaps may have existed in their security layer?". Kirk Davis. Not fully, but at least in a usable format.". Topics covered: National employment laws, harassment, accommodations, training, and more. The MyLaw platform suffered an outage beginning in December, and services were restored earlier this month. UMass had to improvise a way to run payroll for more than 16,000 employees without data on what hours they worked. The other two-thirds are a combination of either nonexempt, hourly workers or nonexempt, hourly and variable pay employees who work different shifts at different times. "Unfortunately, some customer data was stolen in the attacks and that creates a secondary concern for UKG and its clients," said Allie Mellen, a security and risk analyst with research and advisory firm Forrester. OhioHealth managed to get paychecks out, but as one employee showed NBC4, her unique circumstance highlights a major issue in her employees backup plan. ", "It was certainly the most notable and recent example of [ransomware] causing some challenges for the HR team," said Allie Mellen, security infrastructure and operations analyst at Forrester, who added that the incident likely will not be the last of its kind. The company said the first phase of its recovery process was completed January 22, restoring access to the core functionality of Private Cloud. A more significant long-term takeaway may be that employers need to have their own plan to recover payroll data in the event of a similar incident, according to Pemberton. . As knowledge spread of a larger outage affecting multiple employers, Pemberton, who used to work as an incident response representative for Kronos, said it was his impression that "even Kronos didn't understand what was going on. Baptist Health executive director Cindy Hamilton said that the hospital can write its employees a check if they are owed a substantial amount of money due to an error caused by the ransomware attack. Dave Zielinski is principal of Skiwood Communications, a business writing and editing company in Minneapolis. The timing of the incident "caused a lot of pain for some of these organizations," Mellen said. Kronos (now known as "UKG" after a $22 billion merger with Ultimate Software in 2020) has 12,000 employees and revenues of $3 billion annually. They were basically bricks for two months. Womens basketball lost to Rhode Island 68-56 in a physical quarterfinals battle in the Atlantic 10 tournament Friday, putting an end to GWs top season since 2018. Those clocks were not cheap. This article appeared in the January 31, 2022 issue of the Hatchet. using alternative processes for payroll, timekeeping and other vital services. Topics covered: Culture, executive buy-in, discrimination, training, equal pay, and more. UMass is a weekly payroll organization, Melgar explained, so it would need to transact pay to employees the following. This is a significant. It lasted one week for the companies to resume using it, and some went up to one month. The employee said a picture is their only personal record of what they are owed. But in her case there was a problem: she was on leave under the Family Medical Leave Act during those pay periods, during which she received 70 percent of her usual pay. "You have overtime that kicks in at different points in time. It was one thing to fix discrepancies for employees on variable schedules, but even calculations for exempt employees could be problematic, Melgar explained. The statement said UKG is now focused on the "restoration of supplemental features and nonproduction environments" and is offering video-based recovery guides to help customers reconcile their data. I mean, I dont know what to do, she said. Some are calling for even more reimbursement from UKG as they recover from the December 2021 incident. You could have a bonus for shifts. **How can I get support during this time? ", Senior HRIS Analyst, MHI Shared Services Americas. Topics covered: HR management, compensation & benefits, development, HR tech, recruiting and much more. 0. **UKG employs a variety of redundant systems and disaster recovery protocols. Learn more. Date: January 4, 2022. For more than a month, the organization relied on backup timekeeping methods. There might be delays in some of it, other than base pay, which the organization made sure to take care of immediately after the hack because timesheets are being done manually right now. ", Melgar said that, due to his understanding that UMass received a fairly accelerated restoration of its system, he believed that Kronos provided its share of support. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. To illustrate what his team found, Melgar explained the different buckets into which employees in the health system may fall. Jennifer Waugh, The Morning Show anchor, I-Team reporter. UKG confirmed in its latest public statement that the personal data of at least two of its customers had been "exfiltrated" or breached. "We had like 100 time clocks. ", "Hopefully," they thought, "it would be up in short order.". Patrick Thibodeau covers HCM and ERP technologies for TechTarget. When the employee reached out to Human Resources and upper management at the hospital, the worker said they were told corrections cannot be made until Kronos is up and running again. Let HR Dive's free newsletter keep you informed, straight from your inbox. 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And in a previously reported interview, Sergio Melgar, chief financial officer at UMass Memorial Health in Massachusetts, said the health system plans to continue using Kronos while implementing a new backup process to handle future incidents. Topics covered: Employee learning, training, onboarding, mentoring, career development and more. It would literally take two years to do. Another employee said when the paycheck problems are reported to their boss, their boss does not respond and has told them they are not allowed to take pictures of the timesheets. "The question for HR vendors is how they'll limit disruption to their customers as they go about solving problems related to ransomware and other cyberattacks. Though it has not been confirmed, there is speculation that the notorious Log4Shell vulnerability was involved given that the Kronos cloud services are known to be built on Java to a . We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience the Kronos outage has caused and the additional work that may have been created for you and your departments, officials said in the email. Of the more immediate challenges caused by the Kronos ransomware attack, litigation launched by affected employees and other parties may be at the forefront. The outage at Kronos has not affected West Virginia alone. RE, a labor union representing some UMass employees, said staff had reported "over 11,000 paycheck errors." ET, Webinar Additional restoration of applications that some customers use as part of their UKG solutions is ongoing. "Effectively, we were trying to understand, how quickly can you back me back up? ", "Unfortunately, there was a lot of frustration early on with a lack of communications from Kronos after the attack and how long it would actually result in downtime," Mellen of Forrester said. JACKSONVILLE, Fla. The I-TEAM has received calls and emails from health care workers who said they are frustrated that they are getting no answers from Human Resources and their bosses about when they will be paid in full for their work during the holidays. "This is the equivalent of a nuke, basically. UKG continues to explore other potential options. The Oscars will air on ABC and can be streamed on ABC.com and the ABC app as well as Hulu + Live TV, YouTube TV, AT&T TV or FuboTV. Virtual & Washington, DC | February 26-28, 2023. She said OhioHealth was unable to provide a time frame for when the discrepancy would be corrected. 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