Virus hits offshoring giant's operations

Infosys Technologies, a leading Bangalore-based software and business process outsourcing company, Tuesday morning had to bring down its network, following detection of a virus attack on some machines on the network.

"We don't have the details of the virus yet, though we think it came through as an e-mail attachment," said a spokeswoman for the company who added that this is not the first time that Infosys has been attacked by a virus, and the network shut down.

"We proactively shut off a part of our network for a couple of hours as part of our business continuity plan," said the spokeswoman. While the network-dependent work was affected, other software development and services work continued as usual, she added.

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Infosys Technologies, a leading Bangalore-based software and business process outsourcing company, Tuesday morning had to bring down its network, following detection of a virus attack on some machines on the network.

"We don't have the details of the virus yet, though we think it came through as an e-mail attachment," said a spokeswoman for the company who added that this is not the first time that Infosys has been attacked by a virus, and the network shut down.

"We proactively shut off a part of our network for a couple of hours as part of our business continuity plan," said the spokeswoman. While the network-dependent work was affected, other software development and services work continued as usual, she added.

One of the reasons work was not severely disrupted after the network was shut off was that a lot of the BPO work that the company does is mainly for clients in the U.S., and the workload usually peaks in the evenings in India.

The shutdown of the network on Tuesday only affected Infosys' Bangalore operations, as this part of the network was shut down after the virus attack. About 8,000 persons are employed by Infosys in Bangalore. The company has operations in other cities in the country, as well outside the country.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.