A Norwegian cloud computing company has been hit by a Chinese cyberattack

The attack against Visma, which has more than 900,000 customers, is expected to be a precursor to other cyber attacks against cloud computing companies.

The news: According to Reuters, Chinese hackers have managed to penetrate the Visma systems, which provides accounting, human resources and other online software to customers throughout Scandinavia and other parts of Europe. The company quickly detected the intrusion and said that none of its customers' systems were affected. A Visma leader told Reuters that the attack "could have been catastrophic" if it had not been detected early.

The hack: Visma was one of many companies targeted by what investigators consider a major hacking operation focused on cloud computing companies. The attack, which took place between November 2017 and December 2018, was attributed to a group in China by cybersecurity companies. China has repeatedly stated that it does not participate in cyberattacks.

Tempting targets: As I said at the beginning of the year, companies offering cloud services are popular targets because if hackers can violate them, they can also sneak into their customers' systems. (That's why investigators dubbed the "Cloudhopper" cyber-attack.) While cloud giants like Amazon and Google can spend a fortune on cybersecurity – and Visma was able to thwart the attack – small businesses can be more vulnerable.

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