As Asahi investigates a system outage, Jaguar Land Rover and Harrods struggle to recover from their own recent breaches.
Japanese beer maker Asahi disclosed yesterday (29 September) that it is experiencing a “system failure” caused by a cyberattack, leading to the company suspending a number of its operations.
The brewer, which also owns brands such as Peroni, Grolsch and Tyskie, said that “at this time”, there has been no confirmed leakage of personal information or customer data.
However, as a result of the system failure, the company has suspended its order and shipment operations at group companies in Japan, as well as its call centre operations, including customer service desks.
Sources speaking to Bleeping Computer indicated that the attack began at 7am yesterday. There is currently no information about the threat actors involved or the initial access vector – the cyberattacker’s entry point into the system.
Asahi has more than 30 production plants in Japan, where it produces popular drinks such as Asahi Super Dry beer, Nikka Whisky and Mitsuya Cider. The company also has major operations in Europe, east Asia and the Asia-Pacific, but Asahi stated that the system outage is limited to its Japanese operations.
The company is currently investigating and working to restore its operations but didn’t provide an estimated timeline for recovery.
Other recent attacks
Asahi is not the only company to have its manufacturing operations halted due to a cyberattack.
Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) was hit by a major breach at the start of the month that forced it to turn off computer systems in the UK, Slovakia, India and Brazil, which led to the suspension of work at several of its factories.
Over the weekend, the UK government said it would underwrite a £1.5bn loan guarantee to support the company’s supply chain and protect jobs. JLR also agreed a separate £2bn debt deal with America’s Citigroup, Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ and Britain’s Standard Chartered Bank.
Despite the financial support and the company’s plans to resume some its manufacturing operations in the coming days, worries remain over the job security of some of its workers.
Meanwhile, UK luxury department store Harrods suffered a major cyberattack last week, when 430,000 customer records were stolen in a third-party data breach.
According to the high-end retailer, no financial information or sensitive information – such as passwords – were compromised.
Over the weekend, it emerged that the threat actor responsible had contacted Harrods. While the company did not reveal the details of the communication, it stated that it wouldn’t engage with the cyberattacker.
The attack is the second major incident for the retailer after being targeted over the summer, and has raised concerns over supply chain security according to Dennis Martin, crisis management and business resilience specialist at Axians UK.
“The recent Harrod’s data exposure is the latest in a spate of high-profile IT supply chain breaches. Your systems and processes, IT-based or not, are only as resilient and secure as the weakest link in your supply chain,” he told SiliconRepublic.com. “Cyber extortion has evolved beyond basic ransom demands into multi-pronged assaults.
“It’s now increasingly common to see hackers employ the double threat of leaking data publicly, or triple threat of reaching out directly to clients, suppliers and other third parties demanding payment to avoid further expos. This widens the blast radius of every breach and turns an incident into a systemic crisis.”
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