Recently, Toyota experienced a large-scale data breach affecting the personal information of many of its customers in the Asia-Pacific region. There have been several Toyota data breaches across the region including in Australia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Japan. The largest of which was in Japan, which is thought to have affected 3.1 million customers. The cyberattack was widespread, occurring at eight separate locations across Tokyo.
Although Toyota had a system in place to notify the company that there was a breach, they were unable to prevent the leaking of customers’ personal information. Toyota has classified the breach as “unauthorized access” and has assured that no credit card information has been leaked. However, the compromised information does include highly sensitive information, including customer names, dates of birth, and employment information.
A similar attack occurred in March of 2019 in Vietnam and Thailand where servers were accessed without authorization. This has led cybersecurity experts to speculate that the breach was the result of a coordinated attack by a cyber-espionage unit in the region–more specifically the Vietnamese hacking group known as APT32.
Toyota is no stranger to hackers; in August, there was a Meaningful Breach that affected Toyota’s email system. The attack may have compromised the protected health information (PHI) of 19,000 employees. In the aftermath, Toyota strengthened its safeguards in order to better protect employees’ PHI and minimize future attacks.
Toyota has been targeted for multiple attacks resulting in massive data breaches. Each of these breaches have required that notifications be issued to all affected customers and employees. In the aftermath of these breaches, the company has continuously had to update and address vulnerabilities in its security infrastructure.
These incidents demonstrate the need for all businesses to reevaluate their security measures–from the very largest corporations, to the smallest doctors offices. With the rise of the global economy and the increasingly digital nature of data and media, the risk for cyberattacks is on the rise.
Healthcare is currently the fastest growing segment of the US economy. And healthcare data is worth three times the value of financial data on the darkweb. With ransomware, malware, and data breaches becoming increasingly common, the time to address cybersecurity has never been more pressing.
