Hackers expose personal info on 8.9 M. people in Japan in 2019

January 24, 2020

Tokyo--Computer viruses and unauthorized access compromised personal information on 8.9 million people at 32 publicly traded companies in Japan last year, a private credit research firm said Thursday.

The number of affected companies hit a record high since the survey began in 2012, Tokyo Shoko Research Ltd. said.

Most recently, Mitsubishi Electric Corp. <6503> said that a cyberattack exposed personal information on 8,000 people.

There may have been more affected companies as some cases remain unnoticed, Tokyo Shoko Research said.

Personal information on 9.03 million people was compromised at 66 publicly traded companies in the country last year. The bulk of cases was caused by computer virus infection and unauthorized access.

More hackers are stealing customer identification and passwords as the number of companies operating their own e-commerce sites is increasing.

The largest known case of data breach last year occurred at Ogis-Ri Co., a file transfer service unit of Osaka Gas Co. <9532>, where personal information on 4.81 million users was exposed.

"Hackers come to overtake companies' security efforts," a Tokyo Shoko Research official said. Jiji Press