India's Religare says it suffers cyber attack

Several units of India's Religare financial services group suffered a cyber attack, but its systems, operations and sensitive client information were secure and unaffected, it said on Monday.

Religare, which offers a broad range of financial services including equities and commodity trading under holding company Religare Enterprises Ltd, added the attack was of "medium severity," and that "necessary damage control steps" had been taken.

The attack comes at a time of heightened attention on cyber security after global businesses were hit by two major infections containing ransomware requests in recent months. It was unclear what type of disruption had hit Religare.

A Religare spokesman declined to give more specific details, and said the company continued to assess the situation.

Three company sources from different units of Religare told Reuters the cyber attack had affected servers on Monday, and that at least some of the internal IT systems at the brokerage had been shut down.

Some staff had lost access to computer systems as technical teams worked to fix the problem, these sources added.

Last month, operations at one of three terminals at India's largest container port JNPT, near the commercial hub of Mumbai, were disrupted by the NotPetya global ransomware attack.