IOTW: Panasonic confirms data breach
Japanese electronics manufacturer suffers illegal intrusion to file servers
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Japanese electronics manufacturer Panasonic has confirmed that its network has been illegally accessed by a third party.
The company confirmed the breach occurred on 11 November, however some Japanese outlets have suggested the breach began as early as 22 June.
In a 26 November statement, Panasonic verified that some data on a file service had been accessed during the intrusion.
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While details about what information was accessed were not disclosed by Panasonic, Japanese media outlet NHK said that information about the company's technology, business partners, and personal information of employees were stored on the server.
“After detecting the unauthorized access, the company immediately reported the incident to the relevant authorities and implemented security countermeasures, including steps to prevent external access to the network,” Panasonic said.
“In addition to conducting its own investigation, Panasonic is currently working with a specialist third-party organization to investigate the leak and determine if the breach involved customers' personal information and/or sensitive information related to social infrastructure.”
Panasonic has been subject to cybercrime as recently as 2020 when, in November last year, attackers released 4GB of archived data that belonged to Panasonic India.
Panasonic in the cyber security industry
The technology giant is embarking on its own leap into the world of cyber security with the development of a vehicle security operations center (Vehicle SOC) with cyber security giant McAfee.
Together, the two companies will look to commercialize vehicle security monitoring services.
The agreement, announced in March 2021, will look to protect internet-connected vehicles against cyber-attacks.
Panasonic has already been operating SOCs for factories since 2016 to protect systems and networks that manage and control factory equipment and production processes against cyber-attacks – prior to SOC for automobiles.
McAfee noted that with the ongoing development of autonomous driving and the advanced digitalization of cars the risk against automobiles is increasing every year.
