Apex Human Capital Management

Apex Human Capital Management, also known as Apex HCM, is headquartered in the United States of America.
The organisation provides payroll software and related human capital management services.
Its solutions are used by hundreds of customer organisations across various sectors.
The company operates as a payroll software provider within the broader HR technology market.
It maintains infrastructure to support payroll processing for its client base.

On February 19, 2019, Apex HCM experienced a ransomware attack that targeted its payroll platform.
The attack encrypted both the primary production infrastructure and the mirrored disaster recovery systems.
As a result, the organisation's failover capabilities were rendered unusable during the incident.
The encryption caused a service disruption that lasted nearly three days.
The outage prevented customer organisations from accessing their payroll services.
The incident prompted the company to engage external security firms for assistance.

After consulting with the security firms, Apex HCM decided to pay the ransom in an attempt to expedite recovery.
The decryption key supplied by the attackers proved only partially effective, corrupting file directories and executable files.
This partial effectiveness prolonged the restoration efforts and introduced additional complications.
One legacy business unit remained offline even after the main systems were restored.
Affected customers from that unit were subsequently transitioned to newer platforms offered by the company.
The attack vector remained unknown despite recent security audits, leading to an ongoing forensic investigation.
The incident prompted a review of the company's disaster recovery strategies.