On June 29, 2024, Patelco Credit Union — one of the largest credit unions in the United States, with approximately 500,000 members in California — was hit by a ransomware attack attributed to the RansomHub group. To contain the spread, the institution voluntarily shut down its core systems, and the consequences were felt for weeks: online banking, the mobile app, and the call center all went offline, as reported by BleepingComputer and by The Record.
For approximately 16 days — from June 29 to July 15 — members were unable to make transfers, view balances, receive direct deposits, or pay bills. Debit and credit transactions were severely limited. Patelco later notified approximately 726,000 people that their personal data had been exposed: names, Social Security numbers, driver's license numbers, dates of birth, and email addresses. The incident led to class-action lawsuits and a $7.25 million settlement.
The point that matters to any business leader isn't the size of Patelco — it's the time. Sixteen days without critical systems destroys customer trust and drains the cash flow of any company, in any industry. The question is no longer "was I attacked?" — it becomes "how long will I be down when it happens?"
Could your company operate with its core systems shut down for two weeks?
The difference between a hours-long scare and a weeks-long outage rarely comes down to whether or not you were breached — it comes down to how prepared you are for the aftermath: tested, isolated backups that ransomware cannot encrypt, a rehearsed disaster recovery plan, 24/7 detection and response to contain the attack in its early hours, and business continuity measures that keep essential operations running while IT recovers. It was the absence of this framework that turned one incident into 16 days of manual operations. Companies that treat recovery as a routine — not an improvisation — shrink days into hours.