MORE EMPLOYEES TO BE AFFECTED BY RANSOMWARE ATTACK? LEADING IT FIRM SUFFERS LOSS DUE TO DATA BREACH! DETAILS

Many leading Companies and institutions have been affected by ransomware attacks. Cognizant’s healthcare business which accounts to almost 25 percent of its overall revenue has been declining over the last three years. 

It has not improved in terms of overall revenue and profit. Apart from COVID-19 the management is also reportedly facing problems such as management realignment and a maze of ransomware attack. 

“Cognizant clocked $4 billion in revenue for the quarter ending June 2020, a 3.4 percent rise year-on-year. In its commentary, the company said that the ransomware attack impact was about 90 basis points or 0.9 percent,” Moneycontrol cited in its report. 

Its contemporaries on the other hand have managed to gain profit in the last quarter. 

"HCL Tech’s healthcare segment grew 1.9 percent and Infosys’s reported a 7.9 percent growth. TCS, in its commentary, said that Life Sciences was the only vertical that witnessed growth, whereas its other verticals declined. For Wipro, whose healthcare segment accounts for 13.5 percent of revenue, growth was flat,” Moneycontrol’s report added.

The company recently saw a change in leadership since the new CEO Brian Humphries took over the company in April last year. Kaushik bhaumik was heading the healthcare vertical earlier but he quit in July. He was succeeded by Jeff Heenann- Jalil, a form executive from Wipro. He was sacked in December 2019 due to compliance issues according to media reports. 

Cognizant’s healthcare clients can be broadly divided into healthcare payers which includes insurance firms, hospitals, medical equipment manufacturers among others. While the life sciences segment is seeing double digit growth, the other sectors have been badly hit due to COVID-19 as well as the ransomware attacks. Some of the sources from the company have told media that the company lost some of its clients who went to its peers due to the ransomware attack and management realignment. 

Analysts however believe that growth is likely to pick up for Cognizant in the upcoming quarter. Satija of Everest said "the pause in tech spending is ending, albeit slowly. Though Cognizant might have lost some share of business, for its size, it should not be huge and should recover from September or January next year.”

"Life sciences are a significant growth driver for the company, both organically and inorganically, in Europe due to Zenith,” Satija added.