Dozens of NH restaurants affected by nationwide ransomware attack
Dozens of establishments across New Hampshire have been impacted by a nationwide ransomware attack.Restaurant owners said this isn’t affecting the dining experience, but it is causing some problems with gift cards.This time of year is one of The Beach Plums’ busiest with a gift card special right before Mother’s Day.But none of the restaurant’s locations have been able to issue new gift cards for almost two weeks, due to a nationwide ransomware attack on NCR, a supplier for many restaurant point-of-sale systems.“It’s something totally out of our control; that’s what makes it so frustrating,” Robert Lee, owner of The Beach Plum Restaurant, said. “We hope to be able to issue those starting in a few days, but NCR’s been pretty uncommunicative.””The majority of our regulars are completely understanding,” Tom Boucher, CEO and owner of Great New Hampshire Restaurants, said. ”I’m more concerned about the people who want to try us for the first time and they feel like we’re not living up to our end of the deal.”Tom Boucher said all of his restaurants are also having problems with gift cards, loyalty points and payroll for his 900 employees. “I hope people have patience and understand that this is not any restaurant in New Hampshire’s issue — it’s clearly an NCR issue,” Boucher said. In a statement to News 9, NCR said it’s working to both restore applications and enhance its security. “While in-restaurant purchases and transactions continue to operate, affected customers have reduced capabilities on specific Aloha cloud-based and Counterpoint functionality that has impacted their ability to manage restaurant administrative functions. NCR is conducting concurrent efforts to establish alternative functionality for customers, fully restore impacted data and applications, and to enhance its cyber security protections,” NCR said in a statement. Restaurant owners are feeling frustrated with what seems like roadblock after roadblock. “We had two and a half years of the pandemic, we had a year of inflation and trying to find employees and here we are finally getting back to normal and bang, we get hit with this,” Boucher said. “But you know what, we persevere, we…
