Garmin has today (28 July) confirmed that it was the victim of a cyber attack that caused a widespread outage affecting users worldwide, causing all of its call centers and online services to go down.

The attack encrypted some of its systems on 23 July, leaving thousands of users worldwide unable to access or sync any of their data.

Why wasn’t Garmin working?

Garmin has confirmed it was the victim of a cyber attack

The US company shut down its official website and all customer services, including phone lines, online chat and email, after an issue affected its internal network and production systems.

The outage began early in the morning on Friday (24 July) in the UK and was ongoing for five days, but many systmes and services are now returning to operation.

The issue extended its impact to owners of Garmin watches, as it shut down the Garmin Connect service, leaving users unable to sync their sports data through the mobile app.

It also meant users could not access a range of features on their Garmin devices, such as creating new running or cycling routes, or sharing activities on services such as Strava.

Garmin has now confirmed that the issue was caused by a cyber attack and said it currently has no indication that any customer data, including payment information from Garmin Pay, was accessed, lost or stolen.

In a statement, the company said: “Garmin Ltd. today announced it was the victim of a cyber attack that encrypted some of our systems on July 23, 2020.

"As a result, many of our online services were interrupted including website functions, customer support, customer facing applications, and company communications. We immediately began to assess the nature of the attack and started remediation.

"We have no indication that any customer data, including payment information from Garmin Pay™, was accessed, lost or stolen. Additionally, the functionality of Garmin products was not affected, other than the ability to access online services."

Are services now back online?

Garmin has confirmed that many of its systems and services that were affected by the outage are now returning operation, although it warned some features still have temporary limitations.

The company apologised to customers for the inconvenience caused and thanked users for their patience.

The affected systems are expected to return to full operation over the next few days.

Garmin said: “As our affected systems are restored, we expect some delays as the backlog of information is being processed.

"We are grateful for our customers’ patience and understanding during this incident and look forward to continuing to provide the exceptional customer service and support that has been our hallmark and tradition.”

Garmin Connect status: if servers are still down as smartwatch maker confirms a cyber attack caused five-day outage