CPI and The Agency suffer cyber attacks as publisher profits 'hit significantly'

The UK’s leading book printer, CPI, and The Agency have both been hit by ransomware attacks, The Bookseller understands.

Clients of CPI, including Welsh independent Firefly Press, have been majorly affected with some profits “wiped out”. The cyber attack on The Agency – a London-based literary agency – has been attributed to the Rhysida ransomware group, which previously targeted the British Library, and has allegedly threatened to publish stolen data if not paid a ransom. It is unknown whether the same ransomware group is responsible for the CPI attack.

A spokesperson for CPI told The Bookseller: “In the early hours of Friday, 7th February 2025, our IT systems were disabled, affecting the UK part of our business. After completing initial forensic analysis we were able to determine that we had encountered a cyber attack, despite having significant protection already in place across our entire network.

“As soon as the attack was identified, we engaged specialist external technical support, who along with our own teams have been working to recover our systems as quickly as possible. Our colleagues across the whole business have been working extraordinarily hard to develop workarounds as well as to reimplement our IT systems and have made substantial progress. We continue dialogue with our customers and other stakeholders to ensure that they are fully aware of the status. We expect to resume full services gradually over the coming days.”

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