Learn how SHRM Certification can accelerate your career growth by earning a SHRM-CP or SHRM-SCP. Additional restoration of applications that some customers use as part of their UKG solutions is ongoing. Officials said in the email that employees should review their timecards in the Kronos system to ensure there are no missed work hours or discrepancies. Date: January 4, 2022. Care New England spokesperson Jessica McCarthy confirmed that an outage caused by a cyberattack on Kronos Private Cloud . "It's something I don't think having a conversation will resolve, necessarily, but that constant communication with employees is important," she said. Time punches, time off requests and approvals made between the evenings of Dec. 9 and Dec. 11 were not captured due to the outage, and employees should review the system to input any missing data by Wednesday, officials said. "We were making decisions that, in retrospect, I think would be considered the best option given the difficult situation we were in. "Honestly, I think it's only going to become more prevalent as time goes on, unfortunately.". "It's natural [that] people were looking inward and thought, 'Why aren't you doing something different?' To illustrate what his team found, Melgar explained the different buckets into which employees in the health system may fall. I worked at a company that used Kronos. WBRC spoke to University of Alabama at Birmingham computer science professor Ragib Hasan who explained authorities urge companies not to negotiate with hackers, but the company likely had few options to get everything back up and running. Published March 29, 2022 . 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. Staying thoughtful and engaged regarding DEI topicsas well as listening to employeescan help employers meet goals and retain people. 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. Kronos communicated that it discovered the incident late . Kirk Davis. A manual check for additional hours worked can be cut upon team member and manager request. But not knowing how bad the damage was specifically, because I'm not there, I don't know whether I can say if they did absolutely their best, or they didn't, without having that information. Few options were available, Melgar said. These teams worked in addition to separate teams that were simultaneously working on other customer groups in parallel. Several employees with UF Health Jacksonville tell the I-TEAM they do not understand why the hospital is not doing more to correct payroll mistakes and to pay them for extra hours, like overtime, shift differentials, incentive pay and COVID-19 pay. Find the latest news and members-only resources that can help employers navigate in an uncertain economy. Melgar's team first became aware of the attack on Sunday, Dec. 12, the day after it occured. In addition to employee-driven suits, Mellen said UKG could potentially face lawsuits from employers. Contracts can be structured to share responsibility with the client. Their paycheck is still wrong, they told the I-TEAM. ", Following the ransomware attack, Melgar said UMass is still a Kronos customer; "We have to be. Officials announced in an email Thursday that no sensitive data, like social security numbers, birth dates and financial information, was stored in Kronos, but other pieces of information like email addresses and NET IDs may have been compromised. It lasted one week for the companies to resume using it, and some went up to one month. PDF 01.10.2022 Ransomware locked up time records for thousands of companies across the country last month, and those records remain unavailable. "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. The employee said a timely solution is critical. The employee said she spoke to human resources about her issue. **UKG employs a variety of redundant systems and disaster recovery protocols. People really needed to understand the impact of this, she said. Date: January 25, 2022. Kronos did not give a timetable for recovery but said that it expects it to be at least several days, if not weeks, before the services are fully online again. Kronos and its parent company UKG said it spotted unusual activity on December 11, 2021. | 1 p.m. The speed that happens depends on the hospitals systems, but UF Health and other Kronos customers should be notified about a restoration timeline this week. Keolis Commuter Services, a passenger transportation services firm that operates and maintains Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority's commuter rail service, "expects that companies like Kronos will have effective business continuity plans in place, just as we do, in the event of any disruptions," Stephan Oehler, vice president of finance, strategy and transformation, said in an email. Employees should check the Kronos system by Wednesday to ensure last month's hours were properly counted, officials said Newsroom Blog By Lauren Sforza Jan 28, 2022 6:10 PM The University's online time reporting system for employees, Kronos, has been restored after a cyberattack last month possibly compromised GW employees' personal information. 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On Dec. 11, Kronos Private Cloud, an HR management company that offers payment tools, including a service that tracks employee hours, was the victim of a ransomware attack. Updated Kronos Private Cloud has been hit by a ransomware attack. Topics covered: Talent acquisition, diversity and inclusivity in hiring, employer branding, performance evaluations and more. said Sergio Melgar, executive vice president and chief financial officer of the health system. You have successfully saved this page as a bookmark. the day after it occured. , 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. That's because of the complexity of the typical healthcare payroll; it's "maybe the most complicated payroll that exists," he continued. "The reality is we're going to see more of these attacks," said Trevor White, a research manager specializing in HCM technologies with Nucleus Research in Boston. "You're not going to be able to convince everybody. "At that point, I knew we could pay people because we actually went ahead and did the effectively cloned payrolls on the 16th. The company also says it has taken the necessary steps to ensure it can prevent similar incidents, by strengthening the security of its IT systems and implementing expanded scanning and monitoring capabilities. UKG and companies using its services may be facing legal action. In addition to employee-driven suits, Mellen said UKG could potentially face lawsuits from employers. ", UMass knew these manual procedures were designed as short-term fixes, not long-term solutions, Melgar said. "That caused a lot of early friction and frustration. A spokesperson with UKG, the company that operates Kronos Private Cloud, send us this statement: UKG recently became aware of a ransomware incident that has disrupted the Kronos Private Cloud, which houses solutions used by a limited number of our customers. }); if($('.container-footer').length > 1){ else if(currentUrl.indexOf("/about-shrm/pages/shrm-mena.aspx") > -1) { Of the six employers that responded to HR Dive requests for comment, most said they plan to continue their relationship with the company moving forward. Kronos Update from SHARE. 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. 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. "I know this for a fact, so I'm not giving you a hypothetical," Melgar continued. **Our investigation is ongoing, and we are working diligently to determine whether customer data has been compromised. Now, if you remember, Kronos was hit with a ransomware attack, and unfortunately, they've been down ever since, and they're still not back up yet. 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. OhioHealth managed to get paychecks out, but as one employee showed NBC4, her unique circumstance highlights a major issue in her employees backup plan. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast. Your session has expired. Gain the intel you need now to successfully anticipate and navigate employment laws, stay compliant and mitigate legal risks. Moreover, the incident may serve as a cautionary tale to employers about the significance of ransomware attacks against vendors and the "existential" threat such attacks can pose to business, Mellen said. ", 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. They were basically bricks for two months. The application continues to remain unavailable, and the Ultimate Kronos Group (UKG) is working . SHARE advised members to keep track of hours themselves in addition to documenting them for UMass. She recommended that HR teams work with information technology and security teams to develop backup solutions so employers can continue to run payroll if a vendor does not provide its own backup. 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. Fixing discrepancies: 'It can become quite a mess', How 'joint leadership,' 'joint accountability' helped, Webinar Three of those HR Dive spoke with represented health providers. For assistance with WJXTs or WCWJ's FCC public inspection file, call (904) 393-9801. one senior leader compared the Kronos outage to Hurricane Katrina: a worst-case perfect-storm scenario beyond anyone's contingency plans. if(currentUrl.indexOf("/about-shrm/pages/shrm-china.aspx") > -1) { 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. "We had like 100 time clocks. UMass resumes using Kronos as the timekeeping source for its payroll, but discrepancies persist. In February, one New York City transit employee. The MyLaw platform suffered an outage beginning in December, and services were restored earlier this month. We recommend that all KRONOS and KRONOS X users update to version 3.1.0. One employee said they are owed well over $1,000 in incentive pay for working overtime and during the holidays and said the hospitals fix, which is to have employees manually fill out timesheets, is not working. ET, Webinar "Individuals could form a class action suit to claim they were underpaid as a result of the service outage or that their personal data was leaked as a result of their employer not conducting proper due diligence on the security practices of the vendor it contracted with," he said. When the economy is unstable, employers are faced with difficult decisions around staffing, pay and benefits. Page said although Franciscan's UKG service was recently restored, there remains considerable work to do to recover from the outage, including loading manual pay records from the past month back into the UKG system. Kronos Data Breach Resulted in Temporary Outage of Timekeeping Products. 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. Members may download one copy of our sample forms and templates for your personal use within your organization. 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. Data security experts say that customers of third-party providers like UKG not only need to ensure that vendors' data security practices are modern, robust and regularly tested before signing contracts, but they also need to review their own business continuity plans to prepare for the likelihood of similar cyberattacks. "And it can be incredibly cumbersome, especially if you're doing it weekly.". While Kronos is working to address system issues, we have put in place alternate systems to track time and process payroll as scheduled.. using alternative processes for payroll, timekeeping and other vital services. As a result, UKG continues to strongly recommend our customers work with their leadership to activate their business continuity plans. Members of the group worked side by side in call centers to solve the problem. Topics covered: National employment laws, harassment, accommodations, training, and more. The SHARE Union / 50 Lake Avenue, Worcester, MA . document.head.append(temp_style); You may be trying to access this site from a secured browser on the server. ", White said the after-care support from UKG for customers affected by the outage will prove telling. The issue has bedevilled IT teams globally who've been forced to spend time in early 2022 supporting their companies with Excel-based workarounds provided by UKG and other related HR/payroll issues. The incident affected customers using UKG's Kronos Private Cloud product. We are proven, experienced, employee-focused attorneys representing workers across the United States in all types of workplace disputes. Our team members continue to be paid on time, using a combination of scheduled work hours and average pay based on prior pay cycles. With Kronos functionality restored in late January, UMass went about fixing discrepancies in the restored data. alleging that her employer unlawfully delayed payment of earned overtime wages owed to employees beyond their regularly scheduled pay days. Some of them worked Christmas Day away from their families and have not been compensated for the extra pay they receive working a holiday. ", To replicate the system would take years, Melgar explained. On Saturday, Dec. 11, 2021, UKG, the parent company of workforce management platform Kronos, notified clients using its Kronos Private Cloud product of a "ransomware incident." Dan Leveton, media relations manager for University of Florida Health Jacksonville, said in an email that the organization's Kronos system was down "for about three pay periods but is back up and running fine." 2022, Hearst Television Inc. on behalf of WMUR-TV. Subscribe to the HR Dive free daily newsletter, Subscribe to HR Dive for top news, trends & analysis, The free newsletter covering the top industry headlines. 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. "I'm sure many impacted companies are looking closely at the terms of their contracts to see if there are grounds for a lawsuit," said Michael Bahar, co-lead of the global cybersecurity and data privacy practice at Eversheds Sutherland law firm. Original estimates were that Kronos would be able to restore the . For example, healthcare providers impacted by the outage may have been managing outbreaks of the omicron variant. Feb. 9, 2022, 7:41 PM. Topics covered: Culture, executive buy-in, discrimination, training, equal pay, and more. ", "Hopefully," they thought, "it would be up in short order.". The Kronos outage disrupted one employer's payroll for more than a month. Keep up with the story. For more than a month, the organization relied on backup timekeeping methods. All pay will be fully trued-up once the Kronos system is restored.. Kronos, a multinational workforce management platform, has been hit by a ransomware attack that the company said could force its system offline for several weeks. "At the end of the day, ultimately you need to be able to support the employee so that they feel confident that they're getting paid correctly," Melgar said. Updated: Feb 9, 2022 / 11:59 PM CST. Members can get help with HR questions via phone, chat or email. , restoring access to the core functionality of Private Cloud. UF Health Jacksonville declined the I-TEAMs request for an interview, but media relations manager Dan Leveton sent an email in response to our request, the hospital is keeping track of all hours worked and is paying employees for all overtime, shift differentials etc. 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. ET, Presented by studioID and Express Employment Professionals. Then, adding insult to injury, timekeeping and payroll went down for many. . Human resources management company Ultimate Kronos Group (known as Kronos) said it suffered a ransomware attack that may keep its systems offline for weeks. That lack of awareness meant that Melgar and his team could not communicate to employees the magnitude of the problems they were experiencing. The health system ultimately took the last finished payroll it had on record and duplicated it, with some adjustments for staff hires and departures. "The system can go down at other times for different reasons," he said. And if you don't have the data, you cannot calculate it.". hoping that we would have the immediate solution," Melgar continued. Meanwhile, Massachusetts-based grocery store chain Stop & Shop also implemented an "alternative process" for pay and scheduling when its Kronos time entry system went down, said Caroline Medeiros, external communications manager; "Making sure our associates are paid on time and accurately continues to be a top priority. January 25, 2022. Kronos timekeeping and leave update Download image January 17, 2022 The Payroll Office announced the restoration of the Kronos time and attendance system. ", Melgar cited the health system's complex payroll situation among the reasons he insisted that UMass be "at the front of the line" for restoration. Topics covered: HR management, compensation & benefits, development, HR tech, recruiting and much more. Hellman & Friedman LLC, a private equity firm, owns UKG. Topics covered: National employment laws, harassment, accommodations, training, and more. Not fully, but at least in a usable format.". Kronos, the workforce management platform, has been hit with a ransomware attack that it says will leave its cloud-based services unavailable for several weeks - and it's suggesting that. The Kronos Private Cloud outage may serve as a cautionary tale to employers about the significance of ransomware attacks against HR vendors, said Allie Mellen,security infrastructure and operations analyst at Forrester. But every employee is being paid at least base pay right now, and will be paid for all hours worked. 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. "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.". For the little guys that are clocking in and out every day, this is detrimental. If corrections can wait for the next on-cycle . 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. } 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.". What does antisemitic discrimination look like at work? Kronos, the cloud-based, HR management service provider, suffered a data incident involving ransomware affecting its information systems. The vendor has restored its time-keeping and payroll services after a ransomware attack disrupted the lives of thousands of HR professionals and employees alike. At this time, we are not aware of an impact to UKG Pro, UKG Ready, UKG Dimensions, or any other UKG products or solutions, which are housed in separate environments and not in the Kronos Private Cloud. Kronos would gather that information, then transmit it back to UMass upon the completion of payroll so the employer could make adjustments. so be sure you stay tuned for the latest updates. "I understood that if it was not a hardware issue, that the alternative is a cyber software problem, in which case may be the worst of all situations.". A long ordeal for customers of Ultimate Kronos Group (UKG) is nearing an end. If your child will play baseball or softball this spring, youll need to stock up on appropriate clothing and equipment. 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. December 16, 2021 - HR management solutions provider Kronos, also known as Ultimate Kronos Group (UKG), fell victim to a ransomware attack that impacted healthcare workforce management and payroll . Weve communicated that to staff throughout the Kronos outage so they should be aware and we will continue to do so moving forward.. A spokesperson for Kronos's public relations firm pointed to the latest update about the incident and the company's recovery efforts, but avoided comment on the lawsuits. **Due to the nature of the incident, it may take up to several weeks to fully restore system availability. 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. Yeah, absolutely. 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. Because Melgar oversees UMass' finance and IT departments, the outage directly affected areas of the company under his leadership. But when another email on Sunday confirmed that things were still down, "that was not a good sign," Melgar said. "And so I needed to know, are you going to have a system up? UCPath is the system of record for payroll. Cybersecurity Dive contacted UKG, Tesla, PepsiCo and the MTA asking for comment on the attack and the lawsuits. 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. Sam Grinter, senior principal analyst in the HR practice for Gartner, said he expects many affected UKG clients to move to new platforms with the vendor. The company said the first phase of its recovery process was completed January 22, restoring access to the core functionality of Private Cloud. "In order for either the clinical or for the revenue side to have optimal performance, they have to have full integration and cooperation with the IT folks so that, effectively, everybody has a common, understood responsibility for the outcomes," he continued. $('.container-footer').first().hide(); Ultimate Kronos Group (UKG) revealed that one of its cloud-based time and attendance systemsKronos Private Cloudwas exploited by hackers and that the outage could last several weeks . To review the communication that was sent out December 13, 2021, visit www.ukg.com/KPCupdates. UMass runs its first "clean" payroll since the attack. Updated: 6:36 PM EST December 23, 2021 GREENSBORO, N.C. Cone Health said they are one of the companies impacted by the Kronos ransomware attack that began earlier this month. But sources also acknowledged the company's response improved as time went on. In light of the global pandemic, we had specialist teams dedicated to healthcare, first responders, and similar customers. . ", "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. SHARE advised members to keep track of hours themselves in addition to documenting them for UMass. OhioHealth is one of about 27,000 employers that rely on the Ultimate Kronos Group for its human resources systems. Workforce management solutions provider Kronos has suffered a ransomware attack that will likely disrupt many of their cloud-based solutions for weeks. While UKG has dedicated extensive resources to resolving this issue and supporting our impacted customers, we do not have an estimated time of resolution. But it's better than nothing: "If we have it as a backup at least, we might be able to get to it a little bit smoother and not necessarily clone a payroll, which is part of what creates the problems that we ended up having to clean up.". Please log in as a SHRM member before saving bookmarks. } Prior to the outage, UMass workers would clock in either manually or remotely, through an app. "Some organizations impacted by the attack opted to simply pay people what they were paid in cycles before the outage, but we wanted to make sure employees were paid exactly what they were owed," Page said. Please enable scripts and reload this page. Please log in as a SHRM member. Nonetheless, MHI Shared Services also will retain Kronos moving forward, Pemberton said, and the organization plans to migrate from the Private Cloud product to UKG's Dimensions product, which Pemberton described as a more secure alternative in part because it is hosted on Google's cloud platform, rather than Kronos'. January 14, 2022 - HR management solutions . Get the free daily newsletter read by industry experts. 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. var currentUrl = window.location.href.toLowerCase(); Melgar said he believes this experience prepared UMass staff to coordinate around objectives like the response to the Kronos outage. Keep up with the story. Older Post Digest: SHARE Job Fair, 2022 Dues Increase, Members Improving their Work, and More. Though UF Health used manual timesheets during that time, employees continued to clock in and out as usual, and this information was stored locally in the organization's time clocks.