Cyberattacks on Japanese companies show no sign of stopping. Hackers have broken in and stolen customers' personal information, and some cases are heading toward class actions.
Shiho Moriai, a director of the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) who also served as head of its cybersecurity research institute, said the attacks have only just begun. She spoke about the latest methods hackers are using in an interview with freelance journalist Daiki Yuasa.
Breaches and the boardroom
A single wrong step can put a company's survival at risk, Moriai said, and malicious attackers are common. The interview was published as the breach at GMO Internet Group's cloud service drew a public apology from its president.
On November 2, GMO Internet Group president Masatoshi Kumagai, 63, held a news conference on unauthorized access to the group's Onamae.com Desktop Cloud service. He acknowledged that experts had flagged problems with the system two years before the breach.
“It is also a fact that we had received indications from experts about problems with the system.”Masatoshi Kumagai, president, GMO Internet Group
Kumagai, who teared up during the news conference, runs the group as a hands-on chief executive. The breach exposed how long a known weakness went unfixed before customer data leaked.