The names, addresses and phone numbers of more than 1.5 million people who contacted Asahi’s customer services have potentially been leaked following the September cyberattack on the company, it has warned.
The personal information of 107,000 employees and former employees, and 168,000 staff family members, also may have been exposed, the Japanese brewer revealed.
In September, Asahi Group Holdings confirmed it had suffered a crippling cyberattack, resulting in a “system failure”. The company moved to suspend all beer orders and shipping operations in Japan, as well as all call centre operations in the wake of the attack.
At the time, the brewer said there had been “no confirmed leakage of personal information or customer data to external parties” as a result.
But this morning, following an investigation in collaboration with external cybersecurity experts, Asahi said it had found “some data from company-issued PCs provided to employees had been exposed” and that “there is a possibility that personal information stored on servers in the data centre may have been exposed”.
The company said it had so far “not confirmed any instance of this data being published on the internet”.
In a statement, Asahi said at 7am on 29 September there was “a disruption” to its company systems, and an initial investigation “confirmed the presence of encrypted files”.
Later that same day, at 11am, the company “disconnected the network and implemented measures to isolate the data centre to minimise the impact”.
“The investigation revealed the attacker gained unauthorised access to the data centre network through network equipment located at our group’s site,” the company said. “Ransomware was deployed simultaneously, encrypting data on multiple active servers and some PC devices connected to the network.”
The company has spent the past two months “containing the ransomware attack, restoring systems, and enhancing security to prevent recurrence” it explained, but had still not fully recovered, with a “phased restoration of systems and devices confirmed to be secure” still underway.
“Those whose information has been confirmed as exposed, as well as those who may be at risk, will be notified in due course,” Asahi said.
Atsushi Katsuki, president and group CEO, this morning apologised for the disruption.
“We are making every effort to achieve full system restoration as quickly as possible, while implementing measures to prevent recurrence and strengthening information security across the group,” he said.
“Regarding product supply, shipments are resuming in stages as system recovery progresses. We apologise for the continued inconvenience and appreciate your understanding,” Katsuki added.
Asahi is one of several grocery firms to be hit by cyberattacks this year, among them Co-op, M&S, dairy giant Arla Foods and German business Oettinger.
Asahi added it is postponing the announcement of financial results for the fiscal year ending 31 December, as a result of the disruption.
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